Re: Oracle newbie [Oracle/NT backup/perf/hardware]

JD-

What is the status of this system, is it production? Is the data all coming in from other systems, or is some being input on this system only?

If you can afford to do a daily coldbackup, that is excellent. However, if the users are inputting/updating/deleting, this could potentially expose you to up to 8 hours (or however long the work day is) of lost activity.

Also, frequent Oracle "exports" of critical user data (etc) can be taken and backed up independently. If such are fairly small (eg, zipped), you can even consider using CDR backup media, or sending them to another server, and so forth.

Once you depart from basic cold backup schemes, get ready for the full "beastiness" because hotbackup is "hairy", and requires considerable expertise in Oracle DBA skills to know if you have done things right so that any recovery you have to do will end up being right.

Here is a general Oracle/NT site that I found in my bookmarks:

  http://www.ipass.net/~davesisk/oont.htm

Also: http://www.orafaq.com has a NT section:

  http://www.orafaq.com/faqwinnt.htm

Some *excellent* free docs on backup/etc:

  http://www.geocities.com/tbcox23/

(the above site's author uses compaq also)

Also, look under a general list of Oracle backup books, I've heard everyone say that Velpuri's book is excellent.

Hopefully the real Oracle/NT experts will confirm/deny/correct the above info.

Paul Drake is an excellent RAID/NT resource person on this list. Hopefully he will answer those issues. As far as I know, running on one disk isn't fatal, but it could make recovery a *lot* more risky and difficult (I think the only way you can do this even remotely safely is with daily cold backups). Look at at least getting a separate mirrored disk for Oracle. Also, look in Oracle's documentation for specifics on backup issues with "control files".

The hardware/performance issues probably depend on #users, and the nature of application. You might want to give more specifics, but I would guess that you are *not* going to have enough "horsepower" if you have very many users. If it is mostly/all read-only there are probably some specific tuning methods you can use.

Besides the disk issues mentioned abiove, you might want to look at putting some line items in you hardware budget for extra memory, especially if you can get another 512mb for around $500 which is pretty cheap.

regards,
ep

(b)cc: tbcox @ att . net

On 6 Nov 2000, at 10:04, DanversJ wrote:

Date sent:      	Mon, 06 Nov 2000 10:04:10 -0800
To:             	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>
From:           	DanversJ <DanversJ_at_gunlocke.com>
Subject:        	Oracle newbie

>
> I have inhereted an oracle server that I need to ensure
> 1 - runs
> and
> 2 - gets backed up.
>
> I'm the NT network admin for my present employer and I basically know
> nothing about this beast called oracle.

> ... I'm going to request that our in house
> oracle person shutdown the dB(s) at night so that the backup software
> (backup exec 7.3 multi-server) can at least get a good "cold backup" of the
Received on Mon Nov 06 2000 - 13:11:34 CST