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Re: RMAN Backup Question - FILESPERSET

From: Mark Strickland <strickland.mark_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:42:15 -0800
Message-ID: <90ad14210701300842j596345b9if77f76cf66c6b0b@mail.gmail.com>


This is a followup to explain what I discovered through my testing and with confirmation from Oracle Support. When RMAN calculates how many files to put in each backupset, it's based on the size of the datafiles, not the amount from each file that will actually get backed up. Even if FILESPERSET is set higher, MAXSETSIZE will still limit the size of the backupsets. For my level 1 incremental backups, MAXSETSIZE was set to 6-GB and RMAN was putting just 2 or 3 files in each backupset. This resulted in about 330 backupsets with many of those being just 20K in size. Backing up that mess to tape took 4-1/2 hours. I'm now running the level 1s with MAXSETSIZE set to 64-GB and RMAN puts around 15 files in each backupset. I end up with around 30 backupsets with a few being 70K and the largest being 330-MB. That only takes about 40 minutes to back up to tape. MUCH better. I'm going to watch the backups this week, then probably raise MAXSETSIZE to 128-GB. I don't actually want backupsets that are that large, but in this case, I think there's very little risk of that happening. It would require 25 of my 5-GB datafiles to have most or all of their blocks modified to result in a backupset that large. Not going to happen (famous last words). There is no bulk loading of data and no batch jobs that modify large amounts of data. So RMAN can use the Block Change Tracking file to determine what to back up but not to calculate how many files to put in each backupset. Pity.

Regards,
Mark Strickland
Seattle, WA

On 1/24/07, Mark Strickland <strickland.mark_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oracle 10.1.0.5 on Solaris 9. Using block change tracking file and
> flash_recovery_area.
>
> The incremental level 1 backups of one of our databases produce a large
> number of very small backupsets, about 20K each. This causes the backup of
> the flash_recovery_area to tape to take around 4-1/2 hours whereas the
> backup to the flash_recovery_area beforehand takes around 15 minutes. There
> are 378 datafiles and many of them never get modified (old partitions). The
> backupsets appear to always have 3-4 datafiles and the backupsets for those
> never-modified files are very small. FILESPERSET is not set, but MAXSETSIZE
> is set to 6000M. There are four channels. I've pored over the manuals and
> Robert Freeman's fine RMAN book, along with Metalink and Google, and it
> seems there is conflicting information about the default value for
> FILESPERSET. In one place in the docs, it says that
>
> "The number of files to be backed up is divided by the number of channels.
> If the result is less than 64, then it is the number of files placed in each
> backupset. Otherwise, 64 files will be placed in each backupset."
>
> Robert Freeman appears to agree with that. In my case that would be the
> lesser of 378/4 or 64, so 64. In other places in the docs, it says that the
> default maximum number of files that will go into a backupset is 4. That
> pretty much matches what I'm seeing in my environment. I've been
> experimenting with FILESPERSET today in a test environment and I'm able to
> set it to different values and observe that the backupsets do contain that
> many files. Therefore, on Friday evening, I plan to change FILESPERSET to
> 64 in Production and run the incremental level 1 backup and see what
> happens. If it fails for some reason, I can easily re-run it with the
> default.
>
> Another oddity is that for our level 0 backups, we have MAXSETSIZE set to
> 10G but I see a few backupsets that exceed that size, like 20G. Not worried
> about that, just curious.
>
> Any insights?
>
> Regards,
> Mark Strickland
>
>

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Received on Tue Jan 30 2007 - 10:42:15 CST

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