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For years, CrashSimulator has been one of the most recognized tools in the Oracle community for safely practicing Oracle Database backup and recovery procedures.
Today, I’m excited to announce that CrashSimulator is coming back—completely redesigned, significantly expanded, and now fully open source.
But this is much more than a relaunch.
CrashSimulator V2 represents a fundamental evolution from a database crash simulator into a comprehensive Oracle Database Resilience Validation Platform.
Why CrashSimulator?
Every Oracle DBA knows backups are important.
Every architect knows high availability and disaster recovery architectures are critical.
Yet one of the biggest challenges organizations face is answering a simple question:
Can we actually recover when something goes wrong?
Many organizations have RMAN backups.
Many organizations have Data Guard.
Many organizations have RAC.
Many organizations have documented recovery procedures.
Far fewer organizations continuously validate that these capabilities will work under real-world failure conditions.
That is exactly what CrashSimulator was designed to address.
Practice Recovery Before You Need It
CrashSimulator allows Oracle professionals to safely practice failure and recovery scenarios in controlled environments.
Instead of waiting for a real outage to discover gaps in procedures, skills, documentation, or architecture, teams can proactively exercise recovery workflows and validate operational readiness.
CrashSimulator V2 includes 60 structured scenarios spanning:
- Oracle Database
- Oracle Multitenant (PDB)
- RMAN Backup and Recovery
- Oracle ASM
- Oracle Grid Infrastructure
- Oracle RAC
- Oracle Data Guard
- Oracle Active Data Guard
- Oracle Network Services
- Oracle Security (TDE)
- Configuration and infrastructure failures
These scenarios cover everything from datafile loss and redo corruption to RAC failures, Data Guard disruptions, ASM issues, TDE wallet availability, and backup recoverability challenges.
Two Ways to Use CrashSimulator
CrashSimulator V2 introduces two operating modes.
Command-Line Interface (CLI)
Ideal for experienced DBAs, automation, and scripting.
The CLI provides complete control over scenario selection, protection workflows, recovery operations, validation, and reporting.
Guided Workflow Mode
A completely redesigned guided experience that makes resilience testing easier and safer.
The guided workflow walks users through a structured process:
- Discover database topology
- Select a scenario
- Review recovery runbooks
- Perform dry-run validation
- Execute protection workflows
- Run failure simulations
- Execute recovery procedures
- Validate results
- Generate reports and evidence
The workflow is topology-aware and automatically adapts to the environment being tested.
Automatic Topology Discovery
One of the most powerful additions in CrashSimulator V2 is automatic environment discovery.
The platform automatically identifies:
- Database role
- CDB and PDB architecture
- Oracle RAC environments
- Oracle ASM storage
- Oracle Grid Infrastructure
- Oracle Data Guard configurations
- Oracle Active Data Guard deployments
- FRA configuration
- SPFILE locations
- Password file configuration
This enables CrashSimulator to automatically determine which scenarios are compatible with the target environment and provide context-aware recovery guidance.
Dry-Run Everything First
Safety remains a core design principle.
Every scenario supports dry-run capabilities that allow DBAs to review planned actions before any change is made.
Dry-run mode helps teams:
- Understand the impact of a scenario
- Validate targeting logic
- Review recovery procedures
- Confirm environmental prerequisites
- Build confidence before execution
Built-In Recovery Runbooks
CrashSimulator V2 automatically generates recovery guidance for each scenario.
Instead of simply simulating a failure, the platform provides structured recovery workflows, validation steps, and operational recommendations to guide the recovery process.
This makes CrashSimulator equally valuable for:
- Skills development
- Recovery exercises
- Operational readiness programs
- Team onboarding
- Disaster recovery rehearsals
Health Checks and Recoverability Validation
Recovery is not simply about restoring a database.
Recovery is about validating that the environment is healthy and recoverable.
CrashSimulator includes:
- Health validation checks
- Recoverability assessments
- RMAN validation workflows
- Backup coverage analysis
- Configuration reviews
- Post-recovery validation procedures
Compliance and Audit Evidence
Many organizations are required to demonstrate recoverability for internal governance, regulatory compliance, cyber resilience programs, and audit requirements.
CrashSimulator V2 includes comprehensive logging and reporting capabilities that help organizations document:
- Recovery exercises
- Validation activities
- Configuration state
- Backup coverage
- Recovery evidence
- Operational readiness testing
The platform can generate detailed configuration and recoverability reports that provide evidence of resilience activities and support compliance objectives.
Open Source and Community Driven
Perhaps the biggest change in CrashSimulator V2 is that it is now a fully open-source project.
The goal is simple:
To allow Oracle professionals around the world to collaborate, contribute, improve, and expand the platform together.
The Oracle community has always thrived on knowledge sharing, and I believe resilience engineering should be no different.
By making CrashSimulator open source, we can accelerate innovation and build a platform that benefits DBAs, architects, consultants, educators, and organizations everywhere.
Looking Ahead
CrashSimulator’s roadmap is already ambitious.
Upcoming capabilities include:
- Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) assessments
- Automatic MAA maturity detection
- Application Continuity (AC/TAC) awareness
- Fast-Start Failover (FSFO) validation
- DML Redirection assessments
- Oracle Services best-practice reviews
- Role-based service validation
- SLA-driven resilience recommendations
- RTO and RPO advisory capabilities
The long-term vision is to help organizations not only validate recoverability but also understand whether their architecture aligns with their business continuity objectives.
Coming Soon
CrashSimulator V2 will soon be available for the Oracle community.
Practice today.
Recover tomorrow.
Protect always.
Stay tuned for the official open-source release.
Hi Francisco, I would love to participate as beta tester.
Codrin