Which backup tool?

Which method do you recommend to do backups? Recovery manager or using a script based approach?

I am using Orace 8.0.x on NT and Netware (ans probably also UNIX in the future). Each site will only run one Oracle server so a using recovery catalog is not an option. Most sites will probably use a tape backup solution that is not integrated with Oracle backing up other servers as well).

The first questions is, which method is best, Recovery manager or using o/s backup?

I have been using scripts combined with o/s commands (I copy files to a backup directory). However, I would like to find a solution so I don't have to schedule jobs with an o/s command or use o/s commands to copy files and delete archive log files. Since I will support different environments I want to use the same method. And with Netware you have to use 3rd part tools to schedule commands or to execute o/s commands.

I am thinking about using the Enterprise Backup manager because it supports scheduling jobs. The recovery manager subsystem supports backing up archived log files and also deleting them (even if I would prefer keeping 3 days of log files).

However, I have a lot of problems (using EM 1.6 on NT4 SP5) getting this to work. I have frequent crashes, jobs not running (when using o/s backup subsystem) etc.

I am also concerned that since I don't use a recovery catalog I will not be able to do a point-in-time recovery (true?).

Any other methods? Perhaps running a TCL script to perform o/s tasks like copying files and deleting archive logs? Anyone who has a script to do this?

Magnus Received on Thu Sep 09 1999 - 13:32:28 CDT