I have done it this way many times But your mileage may vary. Depends on your system and what you have all set up and how you have customized Oracle apps. K --- On Thu, 6/11/09, Jurijs Velikanovs <j.velikanovs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: From: Jurijs Velikanovs <j.velikanovs@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: How many of you do shutdown your EBS PROD to make a clone? To: ora-apps-dba@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 12:51 AM Hi List, Just a quick question. Would you mind to at least answer YES or NO (any comments are welcome). Do you shutdown your EBS production database for cloning purposes? My answer is: Never! In fact I think it is an awful idea to shutdown you production for cloning proposes for the following reasons: 1. You introduce unnecessary downtime to a system users. You can use hot backups instead. 2. You miss a brilliant opportunity to test your recovery (including recovery time regular assessment, and DBA training). 3. You flush all you cache (shared and "buffer" pool). It will slowdown your processes after you start you instance up. On the other hand I don't see any benefits! PS I was told that even big EBS shops shutdown their systems to make cold backups. Definitely not the systems that my team is responsible for :) Yury