Re: Hot backups on Digital Alpha

Dennis Williams <104052.3374_at_CompuServe.COM> wrote:
>We are a Digital Alpha ( Digital Unix 3.2C) shop running a
>medium-size Oracle database and would like to move to hot
>backups. Currently we stop all Oracle instances, perform a cold
>backup using tar and restart the instances. We would like to move
>to hot backups, but have felt that tar is not adequate for this
>purpose. Because Digital Unix is pretty new, few vendors have
>ported to it and the Digital tools seem pretty sparse. I would be
>interested in hearing from anyone who has evaluated the tools
>like Polycenter or is currently doing hot backups, and how you
>are doing them.

WARNING be very careful when using ADVFS to perform a snapshot. The problem is this. ADVFS will store the state of the fileset but it is likely that the database will spread over more than one fileset, (the database including all the control files, redo ...). Even if the databes is currently on one fileset now that it could easily spread over more than one in the future (when you add a tablespace)

An ADVFS store of a database taken by snapshoping fileset by fileset, using networker or tar is refered to by oracle (in conversations I have had) as a warm backup, ie. neither hot not cold and inherently unreliable.

ORACLE sell a product (OBACKUP) which at version 2 (ships with ORACLE 7.2 I think) allows for the backup of a remote database. The model that ORACLE use is that one database can store the information about the backup state of another.
For information (white paper) the 'ORACLE enterprise backup utility' is part no C10640 and I will set you a PDF version if you cannot get one from ORACLE directly, of from their WEB site

The above utility is in the progerss of being intergrated with networker, for which you propaply have a licence ( it is one of the bits included for free in NAS200

I hope that this helps

-- 
Mike Skells     skellsmj_at_boat.bt.com
+44 1473 224461
The views expressed here are personal and do not represent
the views of the company that I work for
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