Re: Questions on using RMAN to backup a RAC database with TSM

I know this thread's old... sorry, just getting caught up... :)

You specify a different node-name in the TDPO.OPT file than you do in the DSM.OPT file -- so your database backups are on their own "node" (as far as TSM knows) distinct from the nodename used for server backups. You also set special properties on this node; for example you configure it to never expire backups. (Make sure to find that part of the install guide and follow it!)

Any server can connect to TSM as this "node". You just have to set the password the first time you connect. I've used this mechanism to automate test environment refreshes on TSM by restoring backups to completely different servers.

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Peter Hitchman <pjhoraclel_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> a) Where is the best place to run rman from? One of the RAC nodes? Or a
> third-party "application" server.

Here's one idea: configure all of the RAC nodes to connect as the DB backup node (store the password on all RAC nodes). Copy your backups scripts to all the nodes so that any node can run a backup. Then schedule your backup from a database job. Then if the usual node is down Oracle can still launch the job from another node. Of cousre the DB must be running for the backups to go. Also, you of course want to allocate channels from multiple nodes to take advantage of the network bandwidth on all nodes - but I think that the RMAN job will fail of it tries to allocate a channel on a node that's down... so there's some work to do here. Hmm... maybe you can use connect-time failover for this? I haven't tried yet!

b) What sort of TSM issues would we face, if the machine we made the backups
> from failed, when it comes to restore and recovery?
> I assume that if we backed up using node1 and then tried a restore of an
> archivelog file from node2, we would need to make TSM think that node2 was
> node1 for it to find the backup.
>

Yes that's correct. Just update the TDPO.OPT file and then set the password. (I think you can test the connection with tdpoconf.)

I've done all this before so I know that it's doable... just don't have access to a TSM installation to play with right now. :)

-- 
Jeremy Schneider
Chicago, IL
http://www.ardentperf.com/category/technical

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