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Duplicating an SPFILE from an ASM Diskgroup to the Local File System

by Jeff Hunter, Sr. Database Administrator

Suppose your database is stored using ASM including all physical database files and the SPFILE. You already know and understand how to duplicate database files and even the control file from ASM to the local file system using RMAN (See Migrating Databases from non-ASM to ASM and Vice-Versa). But what about the SPFILE? What if all you need to do is make a copy of the current SPFILE file stored in ASM to the local file system? Your first thought might be to use RMAN, however, there is a much easier method as described below. This method makes a copy of an SPFILE stored in ASM to a text-based initialization parameter file on the local file system.

1. First, identify the SPFILE you want to duplicate in ASM. When the SPFILE is stored in ASM, you generally have a text-based version of the initialization parameter file that points to the SPFILE in ASM:

   $ cat $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/initorcl1.ora
   SPFILE='+ORCL_DATA1/orcl/spfileorcl.ora'

   You can further verify that the SPFILE really does indeed reside in ASM by performing the following query against the ASM instance:

   SELECT
       CONCAT('+' || disk_group_name, SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH(alias_name, '/')) full_alias_path
     , NVL(LPAD(type, 18), '<DIRECTORY>')  type
   FROM
     ( SELECT
           g.name               disk_group_name
         , a.parent_index       pindex
         , a.name               alias_name
         , a.reference_index    rindex
         , f.type               type
       FROM
         v$asm_file f RIGHT OUTER JOIN v$asm_alias     a USING (group_number, file_number)
                                  JOIN v$asm_diskgroup g USING (group_number)
     )
   WHERE type = 'PARAMETERFILE'
   START WITH (MOD(pindex, POWER(2, 24))) = 0
   CONNECT BY PRIOR rindex = pindex;
   
   File Name                                           File Type
   --------------------------------------------------- -------------
   +ORCL_DATA1/ORCL/spfileorcl.ora                     PARAMETERFILE
   +ORCL_DATA1/ORCL/PARAMETERFILE/spfile.268.600397949 PARAMETERFILE

2. OK, so at this point, you want to make a copy of the +ORCL_DATA1/ORCL/spfileorcl.ora stored in ASM to the local file system. The solution is to use the CREATE PFILE... statement as follows:

   SQL> CREATE PFILE='/u01/app/oracle/initorcl.ora' FROM SPFILE='+ORCL_DATA1/ORCL/spfileorcl.ora';
   
   File created.