RE: RMAN

Hi Dave,

> what advantage do you gain...

Well if something goes wrong with your scripts you only have yourself to blame but if something goes wrong with RMAN then you can blame Larry and company. :-) Of course the ultimate responsibility for data remains with the DBA regardless and I'm sure YOUR scripts are quite good.

RMAN incremental backups are a good thing. Why backup the entire datafile when really all that needs backup are data changes? For that matter, if you have a 2GB datafile that's only 10% full why backup the entire file instead of backing up just the datablocks that have data? Online backups vs. hot backups... Less redo with online backups. All things being equal, tuned RMAN backups "should" be faster and require less tape storage. Anyone have benchmarks on this?

> My scripts do hot backups to disk or tape, allow choice
> of tablespaces and will backup tablespace files in parallel
> according to the number of CPU's.

Ditto with RMAN.

> ...taking the two days to install RMAN?
Actually it only takes a few minutes. Complications may arise when compiling 3rd part MML libraries and in my experience it's always been a problem with the MML vendor, not Oracle. I've had some RMAN/MML integrations that were a snap. If you're using a networked tape backup cabinet then you only have to go through it once for all the database servers it supports and RMAN actually works quite well without a catalog now.

Hot backup scripts vs. RMAN... I've done both and I prefer RMAN. The hardest part was giving up on my treasured, proven scripts, learning something else and creating new scripts all over again.

ORRMAN for RMAN,
Steve Orr
Bozeman, MT

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 9:55 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Hi Lisa, Steve,

        But what advantage do you gain by taking the two days
        to install RMAN?

        The only one I can think off is the block level backup
        but that can create problems of it's own. They used
        to do block level backup in the 60's and gave that up
        because of the complexity.

        Disadvantages:
        - another database to backup
        - another dependency (ooooh I hate those)
        - upgrades and version conflicts


        My scripts do hot backups to disk or tape, allow choice
        of tablespaces and will backup tablespace files in parallel
        according to the number of CPU's. The last major change
        I made to them was from Oracle 6 to Oracle 7.0. The biggest 
        advantage is that the procedure to recover every database
        is exactly the same. RMAN starts with which catlaog do I 
        connect to.

        My recovery command (for the easy ones at least) is:

        recover database auto in svrmgrl.

        Apart from that, DBA's who have never used anything but
        RMAN may be able to recover but usually do not understand
        the underlying concepts and so are unable to figure out what 
        to do when problems during recovery arise.

Dave

-- 
Dave Morgan
DBA, Cybersurf
Office: 403 777 2000 ext 284
-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Orr, Steve
  INET: sorr_at_rightnow.com

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L
(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may
also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).