Re: Looking for Suggestions - 5 TB DB WHSE Backup options

On 07/18/2016 05:41 PM, Woody McKay wrote:
> I knew of one place that used a multi-mirrored storage solution. They
> simply snapped off a mirror each night as a backup. Not sure how
> viable a solution that really is though.
>
>

Very viable. You put the database into the backup mode and snap the data files and archive log files. Then you backup the files off the disk snapshot using the normal file system backup. Normal file system backup, with multiple readers, can read the snapshot very fast and you're only limited by the speed of writing to the tape. This is also nice to have for the long term retention.
However, snapshot is not a copy. Your original database will feel the heat since both its storage and the snapshot are pointing to the same locations on the disk array.
Even without copying to the tape, you can use advanced copying mechanisms available on the array to copy the snapshot to a different location. SRDF, HUR (Hitachi), SnapVault (NetApp) and similar things are usually used to achieve that. You can recover from a snapshot in one of two ways:

• Mount the snapshot and copy the DB files from the snapshot to the original locations.
• Do a hardware revert, which will return the LUN to the moment in time when the snapshot was taken. That is the fastest way of restoring the database. It's also fairly expensive.

There are many places that do snapshot backups. And many backup software suites that support that. Commvault too, of course. Tape backups are usually only used to meet regulatory requirements, like keeping the data around for 7 years (HIPAA, SOX).

-- 
Mladen Gogala
Oracle DBA
Tel: (347) 321-1217


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