> We have 16 similar instances that we want to merge into a single > instance. I'm looking for input on the best method. Below is all I could > think of to help. > > Oracle 12.1.0.1 on Linux > All instances exist on the same server....> Each is around 500GB (5.5TB > total)....> I'm thinking of transportable tablespaces, but I'm looking for > other Michael, You can consider multitenancy. But the cost may be a big concern. There may be another option for you. Consider the downtime of export/import of each of your 500GB databases. Can each of the application teams tolerate the downtime? If they don't mind the weekend downtime, you can migrate one at a time each over one weekend, with practically-speaking no downtime. I have an article written before 12c came out. It discusses all issues our shop can think of when many apps use one database (common practice here). Section V talks about data migration using this approach. http://yong321.freeshell.org/computer/ManagingSharedDatabaseEnvironment.docx Yong Huang