Oracle FAQ Your Portal to the Oracle Knowledge Grid
HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US
 

Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: rman backups

RE: rman backups

From: Michael Fontana <MFontana_at_verio.net>
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 09:28:12 -0500
Message-ID: <87E07E8CF4B26D4587451BE788F5C321076A47@IAD-WPRD-XCHB02.corp.verio.net>


While I don't have any production databases running in NOarchivelog at the present time, I actually found one, which had been setup by a vendor consultant, and just switched it over very recently. Except for an export (which failed quite a bit), this database ran totally unprotected.  

How does management allow this? By hiring a subject matter expert (in this case, a vendor consultant) who knows alot about an application but nothing about databases. It was his job to "get it running", not to consider the database or recoverability. After all, he would be long gone before such issues came up. How did it keep running in this fashion? No one wanted to touch it, and management didn't support anyone messing with it, and the even 5 minutes of downtime it eventually took to do the work.  

I eventually overcame this when a datacenter outage caused the server to be down. I was so sure archivelogging was the right thing to do, I implemented it, and then just told management it was done in my next status report. I used their resistance to change to my advantage - if they would not allow an outage to turn it on, they now could not justify, with their own line of thinking, an outage to turn it back off.  

I call this style of management "misapplication of the facts". Or the "if no one's complaining but the DBA, then it ain't broke" concept. I run into it alot. It's the "A" in dba that causes me to resist!  

Good luck with your problem...  

Michael Fontana
NTT/Verio
Senior Database Administrator
mfontana_at_verio.net
214.853.7405(Office)
214.912.3705(Wireless)


From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org on behalf of goran bogdanovic Sent: Wed 11/8/2006 5:59 AM
To: pythianbrinsmead_at_gmail.com
Cc: oracle-l
Subject: Re: rman backups

On 11/8/06, Mark Brinsmead <pythianbrinsmead_at_gmail.com> wrote:

        To take Bob's comments one step farther...         

        If your data is worth the trouble of backing up, archivelog mode is (almost) mandatory.         

        Does your management understand that doing offline backups (without archivelogging -- after all, cold

I have seen such "managers"...it is sad that such people are managing production systems...I just wonder how they get to this position?

        backups don't preclude archivelog mode) leaves you in a position where a serious system failure (maybe coupled with one bad tape cartridge) could cause you to lose several days' worth of data? Are they okay with that?  

        The incrementa cost of running in archivelog mode is (for most organizations) a nit compared to the risk of operating without it.                  

        On 11/7/06, Bob <orcl_at_comcast.net> wrote:

                Hi Brian, Im surprised no one has mentioned that backing up with rman in no archive log mode will give you nothing more than an rman managed cold backup.                 

                ...                 

                Maybe you "cant" run in ALMode (management reasons) but if your goal is to "...become more intimate..." with rman- then archivelog mode is mandatory. The good thing about using rman is that it manages (deletes obsolete, applies recovery) of archive logs for you. Minimal manual intervention is needed to manage, or apply archive logs                 

                ...                                  

--

	Cheers,

-- Mark Brinsmead
Senior DBA, The Pythian Group http://www.pythian.com/blogs
--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
Received on Wed Nov 08 2006 - 08:28:12 CST

Original text of this message

HOME | ASK QUESTION | ADD INFO | SEARCH | E-MAIL US