Oracle 10gR2 Flashback Size

Question

Hi,
I have following configured for flashback -
*.db_recovery_file_dest='/u01/app/oracle/flash_recovery_area'
*.db_recovery_file_dest_size = 4G
I have 3 Oracle Instances running and so, with the same above mentioned parameters, I guess, Oracle created the folders as { I believe Oracle adds $ORACLE_SID folder under flash_recovery_area } -
/u01/app/oracle/flash_recovery_area/DBPROD1
/u01/app/oracle/flash_recovery_area/DBPROD2
/u01/app/oracle/flash_recovery_area/DBTEST
This is not a problem. I was under impression that each of these folder will have 4GB limit for storing the flashback logs. But, looks like that is not the case. One of my database's (DBTEST) flash area was full and then the other two databases started throwing ORA-19815 error in the alert log file. This means Oracle instance doesn't look at it's own area to determine the size of flashback usage? How do we fix this? Just changing the db_recovery_file_dest parameter to '/u01/app/oracle/flash_recovery_area/<database_name>' will solve the issue?
Please reply.
Thanks

Answer 1

As matter of fact Oracle allow such setup
Sharing a Flash Recovery Area Among Multiple Databases
Mutliple database can have the same value for DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST, if one of the following conditions is met:
No two databases for which DB_UNIQUE_NAME is specified have the same value for DB_UNIQUE_NAME.
For those databases where no DB_UNIQUE_NAME is provided, no two databases have the same value for DB_NAME.
When databases share a single flash recovery area in this fashion, the file system or ASM disk group holding the flash recovery area should be large enough to hold all of the recovery files for all of the databases. Add all the values for DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST_SIZE for the different databases, and then allow for any overhead such as mirroring or compression in allocating actual disk space, as described in "Flash Recovery Area Size: DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST_SIZE".