oracle rac backup.

[jaivinder]

Hi Experts,

I want to take the backup of the oracle volume group vg_rac using the HP Data protector.
Is it possible to take the backup of the vg_rac because it is a raw data volume group.

Please suggest some way out except RMAN.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Jaivinder

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Javinder,

Really RMAN is the way to go with this - anything else is going to be more complex to manage and won't get much assistance from Oracle if you have problems...

RMAN does integrate well with Data Protector and RAC.

HTH

Duncan

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

RMAN is it.

Oracle RAC requires storage on raw disk. Raw disk can not be backed up by anything else but RMAN.

Veritas and DP 5.X use RMAN scripts to do their backups.

SEP

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Is this a serious production DB or just a toy?
Serious business deserves, no requires, serious backups.
Please articulate why you think Rman is not acceptable.

As to backuing up raw volumes, of course that can be done and has been done, but the risks/rewards/price balance may not make it the right choice.

If you do want to further investigate that route, then please check out my recent reply to:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1168395

hth,
Hein.

[Emil Velez]

Another option would be for your DBA to dump database table information into text files (I think they call it a export) and then backup the text files.

Then if there is a need you would recrecreate the database and then import the data.

By the way oracle RAC 10GR2 can also be done with CFS (cluster file system) so you have filesystem files that you can use. This could make backups without rman a little easier if you wish.

RMAN is the de-facto backup tool with oracle and is the proper way to back up the database while is running. Your DBA should be trained to use it.

[Yogeeraj_1]

Hi Jaivinder,

As mentioned by most of the Gurus above, if this is a business critical system and that you cannot afford data lost, the most efficient and easy way to backup your database is RMAN.

EXP and EXPDP will only allow you to create point-in-time snapshot/dumps of your database and should not be considered as a backup!!

I would also recommend DISK backup as your primary backup.

Hope this helps too!

kind regards
yogeeraj