Hi David,
The short answer to your question is yes, you can take consistency storage snapshots for Oracle on AIX. There are two methods to doing this...
1. Crash consistent snapshots...this is basically where you create a volume collection with all of your volumes in a volume collection, and take a snapshot without doing anything on the host or database side. As of 11gR2, Oracle supports crash consistent backups, and you should be able to get your database back up and running by reverting your database back to your snapshot and opening the database.
2. Application consistent snapshots...this is when you place the database in hot-backup mode, then take your snapshot using a volume collection snapshot, and then taking the database out of hot-backup mode. This takes some coordination on your part (typically scripted) to place the database in and out of hot-backup mode.
In both cases, you need to create a volume collection that has all of your database volumes in it. You can then create, or manually create volume collection snapshots that snap all of your volumes at the same time. For Oracle databases, I suggest creating a volume collection per database.
Once you have volume collection snapshots, and want to revert your database back to an earlier version of your database, the typical steps are: shut down the database, restore all volumes from the same snapshot back to the original location, and then startup the database. With application consistent snapshots, you should also be able to apply archive logs once the database has been restored in order to get your database back to a certain point in time, SCN etc.
I suggest you look at the Oracle Deployment Consideration Guide on InfoSight for more suggestions.
Also, please let me know if you have any additional questions! I'm more than happy to help!
Thanks!
Freddy
