EVA business copy and Oracle RAC with ASM

[Gabriele Delconti]

I'd like to know if it is possible to create and manage Oracle DB snapshots (i.e. consistent db images that can be mounted under other db servers) using the exact configuration below:

- EVA4000 with business copy
- Oracle 10g r2 32bit Standard Edition
- Oracle RAC with ASM

Please note the "standard edition" requirement that force ASM adoption under RAC.

Thank you in advance

gd

[NathanK]

No matter what the file system is holding, Oracle, DB2, or whatever you can do this. This is because BC take a block level snapshot. It is unaware of the actual data that is on the disk. You must have static data on whatever it is you are taking a snapshot of, for as long as it takes to complete. It's a fairly simply process if you want to do it by hand, or you can automate/schedule jobs to do this for you.

I assume you are running on HP-UX or Win. With Win you can't present the snapshot back to the same host. This isn't a problem with HP-UX

Nathan

[Gabriele Delconti]

Thank you for your replay nathan.

No doubt that EVA (or any other virtualised storage) can create instantaneous snapshots at block level.

However, under Oracle RAC, preserving db consistence could be a little bit trickier.

What about data stored on each RAC node HDs?

Is RMAN involved in assuring that the snapshot can consistently presented to and opened by ANOTHER pair of RAC nodes?

Operating system is RH Linux 4 update2.

Of course the business need is to be able to perform ZeroDowntimeBackup and Business Intelligence on the copy of the production db.


gd

[L. B. Andersen]

To do this, without integrating to the Oracle DBMS engine, you would have to be able to do a consistant (same point in time) copy of all your volumes, which would give you a write consistant, restartable copy of the data structure. I do not think that this is a feature available in The EVA BC implementation. But as other systems available has this ability, it might be worth while asking your HP rep. if this is adoable on the EVA too.

[NathanK]

What's nice about BC is it allows you to run scripts on the host. I am not familiar with your setup, but if at your host you have the ability to make the filesystem consistent, then you can snapshot it with BC.

It's just like a tape backup then in this regard. Once it has completed start the DB backup and you have a consistent copy.