RE: hanging shutdowns

>> None of us doubt that the hot backups are adequate for recovery. <<

From multiple personal experiences with a live production system manual hot backups work! I have never had to recover a live production database using rman. That I have only done in practice, but I believe Oracle and others that the tool does in fact work.

There is nothing wrong with cold backups. A cold backup provides a consistent point in time recovery from which a forward recovery can be done, but unlike with a hot backup does not have to be done. This makes cold backups (or a copy) excellent for sending offsite to a disaster recovery site. No archive logs have to be sent with it. But cold backups require a window. When the database is large enough that just copying all the files takes several hours the time usually does not exist to perform a cold backup. So hot backups were made available to eliminate the need to stop the database while the backup is made.

I think someone needs to question the reasoning behind legal's opinion.

HTH -- Mark D Powell --

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Robyn Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 9:58 AM To: m.haddon_at_comcast.net
Cc: Oracle-L_at_Freelists
Subject: Re: hanging shutdowns

Micheal,

I understand your position and when I arrived here, I made all the same arguments. I've been told that our legal department insists on a cold backup, and the requirement is non-negotiable. We run full test recoveries on all our major systems on a regular basis and we use the hot backups to do so. None of us doubt that the hot backups are adequate for recovery.

So I guess we're not really 24x7, we're 24x7-15 and that 15 minutes is a sacred cow that I need to leave alone right now ...

Thanks for the input and if I was calling the shots, I wouldn't do it this way. However, I would still need a script that would shut the database down quickly, possibly for maintenance or hardware issues, so I really appreciate the suggestions provided on this thread.

Robyn

On 2/27/06, Michael Haddon <m.haddon_at_comcast.net> wrote:
> I definitely agree, the shutdown is not the problem, it is doing what

> it is supposed to do in order to maintain data integrity and preserve
> transactions. The real questions is 'why do you shutdown at all??', I
> haven't been forced to perform a cold backup on a schedule in years. I

> thought 7X24 really meant 7X24. If the production environment can deal

> with the downtime necessary to perform cold backups, then couldn't
> that time be used to perform batch transactions or some other
necessary task.
>
> I would recommend spending some time on hot backups and showing your
> boss that the software is a little smarter these days and a complete,
> point in time/ or some other time recovery is easy. Take a few
> days/weeks and show him that you can give him an exact copy of his
> production system anytime he wants it. Make him comfortable and your
> cold backups will be a thing of the past, otherwise, get another boss!
>
> Just my .02
>
> Mike
>

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