Re: 10g RAC B&R Strategies

Hi Jeff
Not sure as to why you won't have a clustered file system in the absence of VCS. You haven't mentioned your platform however if you are using Linux you have clustered file systems available and Solaris 10 has sun clustered file system clustering technology that will allow you to use a cluster managed /backup available to all nodes.

There is the possibility that you can also backup to NFS however there is bugs with RMAN and NFS, which may or may not have patches available depending on platform, I know there was one for Solaris.

Cheers

-- 
Peter McLarty <peter.mclarty_at_pacificdbms.com.au>
Pacific DBMS Pty Ltd






On Sun, 2008-03-09 at 20:26 -0400, Jeffery Thomas wrote:



> I have some serious doubts concerning our ability to devise a simple

> but robust B&R strategy 

> with 10g RAC given some architectural constraints.   

> 

> We have a slow tape infrastructure where we cannot directly stream

> RMAN backups to tape.

> Instead, with our current 9i VERITAS RAC systems, we have a shared

> file system (/backup)  to which 

> we stream our RMAN backups,  with nightly O/S backups coming along and

> copying the contents 

> of /backup to tape.

>  

> We are nearly ready to start building some new 10g RAC systems on

> Solaris, and the plan was to 

> use a FRA.  In addition, the plan was to use ASM only, no 3rd-party

> clustered file systems such as Sun 

> Clusterware or VERITAS.  As a result we can have a /backup file system

> on only ONE node of the

> cluster, due to the lack of a clustered file system other than ASM.  

> 

> As stated in earlier threads in the Oracle-l archives as per RMAN

> backups to  the FRA: "FRA is primarily 

> a backup to  disk to tape strategy.   Backup to the FRA then backup

> the FRA to tape."

> 

> Obviously, given our current configuation, we cannot do that.    

> 

> As for backing up the FRA to disk, I found  Metalink Note 420290.1,

> dated March 2007,  "Backup Flash

> Recovery Area to Disk Location":

> 

> "The 'backup recovery area' command only works with SBT (tape)

> channels. There is a planned fix to allow DISK 

> channels to be supported.  The RMAN disksbt library, which emulates a

> SBT library (but writes backups to disk location),

> can be used as a supported workaround to backup the FRA to a disk

> location".

> 

> So, is anyone actually doing this?   That is, backing up the FRA to

> disk with the 'backup recovery area' command 

> as per this Metalink note?

> 

> As I see it, our options for backups, given: 1) No direct streams to

> tape, and 2) /backup file system on

> one node are:

> 

> 1) Create the FRA, make RMAN backups to it, and try the SBT_LIBRARY

> option to backup the FRA to 

> /backup.   

> 

> 2) Create the FRA, make RMAN backups to it, and then backup the

> backupsets to the /backup file system,

> using something like this: 'backup backupset all format

> '/backup/...'     

> 

> 3) Do not use the FRA to store RMAN backups.   Only use the FRA for

> archived logs, and make our RMAN

> backups to /backup, similar to our 9i strategy.   Not really a

> practical option.

> 

> Of course, for all 3 options, if the node where /backup is attached

> goes down, there might be a little problem.

> 

> Other than *fix the tape drives" (not going to happen), or "get a 3rd

> party clusterware in addition to ASM"

> (possible),  do we have other options?

> 

> Thanks,

> Jeff

> 





--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l