Best backup scenerio

This might sound like an odd question, but for the past year we have been implementing a new Oracle database which has approx. 3 million rows in the primary table and averages around 8 GB with indexes.

The problem is that we can not seem to get a consensus on the best way to back up the instance without taking it down. If we enable ARCHIVE mode performance suffers, and any large batch update sucks up alot of disk space, which we believe is partially due to several Context Keys generateing huge redo logs.

The primary requirement is that we should never have to shutdown the database, however we CAN guarantee that it is not being updated for a long enough period to back it up.

Is there a way to do hot-backups without ARCHIVE? My thought was that we can create a mirror of the database, stop all updates to the Master, shutdown the mirror, backup the mirror, bring the mirror back up, and start doing updates again.

Is this possible? What would be the best implementation for this? We are running on an Enterprise 4000 Solaris box. We need to maintain a replicated instance for other purposes, which does not have to be a 24/7 database, so I was hoping I could leverage off of it to eliminate the need for ARCHIVE mode.

I would like to hear stories about how most houses maintain full time (24/7) databases.

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• Keith Moore President KMA Computer Solutions, Inc.