Re: RAC, CFS and online backups

In article <6de2ae57.0212051050.3c52e0d3_at_posting.google.com>, piet.de.visser_at_cmg.com says...
>
>Group,
>
>Running a RAC database (9.2) on an OCFS clustered system.
>Works surprisingly well.
>Having a real file-system is very comfortable.
>
>Question:
>Can we revert to using "conventional" online backup
>instead of using RMAN to take care of backup ?
>
>e.g. would this still allow me to take backups:
>SQL> alter tablespace data_m begin backup ;
>
>nb: we do realize we need archive-logs from ALL instances to
>perform recovery!
>
>Thanks for any feedback,
>
>Regards,
>
>Piet.de.visser_at_cmg.com

You could use either RMAN or "conventional" online backup, regardless of whether this is running RAC, OCFS, raw devices or file systems. I have not seen any of the issues that Paul referred to in his post, but if there are such issues there are two opposing ways of looking at this:

1. If you are running RAC, you're probably doing it to have a scalable highly available architecture. The HA part means you should probably be very conservative, as Paul suggests.
2. On the other hand, there are some things that you can ONLY do with RMAN, like block level media recovery. I personally suspect that there will be more things like this going forward (no actual evidence to prove that of course!), so it may be better to work through any RMAN problems, log them as bugs if needed and so on.

HTH. Additions and corrections welcome.

Pete

SELECT standard_disclaimer, witty_remark FROM company_requirements; Received on Thu Dec 05 2002 - 23:26:32 CST