Re: Disaster Recover Scenario - a few questions

Dave wrote:
> Hey all, we are planning a DRP(Diaster Recover Plan) for our critical
> apps. We purchased hardware/support from a 3rd party and in Jan we
> will be travelling to their site to do a recovery. My question is, a
> few of our databases are on Solaris and a few are on NT. On NT I will
> have to install the software from scratch.
>
> First let me say that we won't be running on identical hardware... It
> will be able to support the same OS versions we have now (2.8/2.6, etc)
> but the hardware will be different. Will we have any issues starting
> up Oracle after an OS restore? Other than hardware, everything else
> will be identical, ie paths, etc. Patch levels may differ slightly.
> I'm 95% confident I can start up Oracle fine in this scenario.. Am I
> correct?
>
> I remember back in the 7.3 and 8.0 days we'd install Oracle once and
> then tar it up so we wouldn't have to install it over and over.
> Any comments?
>
> Tnx.
>

If this is a serious DRP -and I have no reasons to doubt your input, Dave- I would have demanded similar hardware and O/S to start with. And similar in a DRP scenario means patched to the same digit (BIOS, Hardware, Drivers, O/S; the works).
If there's one thing you do *not* want in a DR situation, it is sorting out whether your errors may be caused by some O/S specific, driver or other bug...

You might end up with an OS restore, that does not work, as you may be missing the necessary drivers for the changed hardware - then what?

Apart from that: 95% confidentiality isn't enough: you want 100% (actually - in my book, you *need* 100%: it's a disaster, for crying out loud).
So, test your plan!

-- 
Regards,
Frank van Bortel