Backup strategies

From: Johan Nilsson <jni_at_esrange.ssc.se.--->
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 14:53:58 +0200
Message-ID: <375fb573.0@d2o43.telia.com>

Hi,

having a database at more than five gigabytes of size where data normally only gets added to it, which kind of backup strategy should be used?

The scenario is something like this :

Data is being continously added to the database (20 recs/s, every record timestamped), very rarely deleted.
The database should cover at most X months of data.
The oldest X/2 months of data should be backed up (to tape) and deleted from the database every X/2 months?
NT 4.0 server
Oracle 7.3.3 server (considering upgrade to Oracle8i).
The database can be set to off-line for 1 - 2 hours, during that time it is possible to set the data-collecting processes to 'caching' mode.

Questions :

How should one perform normal backups?
How should one perform the X/2-month backup & cleaning of the database?

I would like to be able of performing a full backup of the database once a week and then doing differential (all that's changed since last full backup) the remaining nights of the week. Tape should then be changed once a week and reused every other week.

Thanks for any suggestions.

// Johan

If replying by e-mail, please remove the spam protection '.---' from the end of my return address. Received on Thu Jun 10 1999 - 07:53:58 CDT