Re: Lightweight method for testing database backup processes

From: Mladen Gogala <gogala.mladen_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 21:25:29 -0400
Message-Id: <20170822212529.6db8aa51b116ec280408d834_at_gmail.com>


On Mon, 21 Aug 2017 16:56:51 +0300
Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman <dbakevlar_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> Exadata has sparse Clone copy capability, thin clone via EM, snap clone and others, which is similar and I'd recommend looking into the potential of using that to verify your backups when you create the test master.  Oracle's documentation spread out, (considering how many different and varying levels of products/costs). Since you have exadata, I'm going with this doc- 
> http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E80920_01/SAGUG/exadata-storage-server-snapshots.htm#SAGUG20386
>
> This will eliminate the complexity and storage demands with your current scenario, along with a template that is easily repeatable.

EMC, NetApp, Pure, Hitachi HDS, Dell Compellent and Equalogic, IBM XIV and many other arrays have the same capability for a very long time. So do ZFS, ACFS, Brtfs, JFS2, NTFS and some other file systems, as well as numerous backup suites. First 3 file systems in that list are made by Oracle Corp. What you call "database virtualization" is a combination of snapshots and thin provisioning. I agree that "virtualization" sounds better, but let's call a spade a spade, shall we? I am not a marketing type and I like discussing in understandable terms. So called "virtual database" is a database cloned from another database using snapshots and thin provisioning. Both snapshots and thin provisioning have been around for a very, very long time. I was breaking BC (Business Continuity) volumes and creating a standby db or read only copies with Oracle 8.3.4 on HP-UX on PA RISC in the 20th century. The same can be said about cloud: "cloud" means running your software on the equipment that belongs to somebody else. The whole "cloud" story is the best marketing ploy in the IT that I have ever seen. If you think that running stuff on ther people's computers is so new, I advise reading "The Cuckoo's Egg" written by Clifford Stoll in the 80's. The book is very interesting on several levels. It begins by a system administrator discovering a discrepancy in the charges for the spent CPU time and actual CPU time spent. That means that there were people buying and selling CPU time on somebody's computer in the 80's. It wasn't called the "cloud" then, but it was essentially the same thing. Not even virtualization is so new, as people who remember VM/CMS can confirm. For those who don't know about it, there is Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system)

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

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Received on Wed Aug 23 2017 - 03:25:29 CEST

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