Business copy Oracle and LVM

[farid S]

Hi,
I had the following environment:
* Oracle Database 9i2
* Data are stores in LVM volumes.
* PV are presented from XP 128
* I had BC license on the XP.

Actually I'm doing the backup using RMAN. BUT I wont to use BC to do do instant cloning of the DB, the backup it up to the tapes.
So, what are the requirement to do that, and what is the best practices?
(Do I need to squeeze the DB or get it to a suspended stat, Is it mandatory to unmount the File system to ensure consistency?)

Many thanks,
Farid.

[KapilRaj]

I do not know what BC is . But it looks like 'BCV' . If it is BCV, youwill need to do the following to do an instance backup and then backup to tape.

a). Sync the BCV group [ basically this will copy the production PVs to an alternate set of PVs ]
b). Once sync'ed , put all the tablespaces in hot backup mode.
c). Split the BCV copy , [ this will unmirror all the relations ]
d). Put the tables spaces on end backup mode.
e). import the VG onto a diffrent [ or same , be careful] server and mount the filesystems . Once done backup them to tape.
f). export the VG.

You will need to automate this everytime you need a backup.

Regards,

KapilRaj

[farid S]

BC stands for Business Copy (XP)...it is written in the post title ?
thanks!

[Bill Costigan]

Kapil outlined the steps. If you are using Data Protector, the add-on modules ZDB for XP and online extensions, automate these tasks for you.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I'm not a big fan of business copy and and am currently being victimized by weak support of this feature on an EVA.

It is however a valid method of getting a quick backup.

You can write a script that downs a supposed 24 by 7 database, takes a snapshot and begins a business copy and have the database up again in less than a minute, depending on factors such as size of data and system speed.

This is a valid reason to explore the concept.

SEP

[Wessam Aly]

The steps referenced earlier by using the BCV is the same steps using BC.

You wont need to close the database however, we can switch your database to the archive log mode.
This, briefly, lets the database created flat file archive logs of all changes being committed to the database.
when taking a backup, you then switch the database online to backup mode (its done without a downtime and takes a few minutes, depending on the size of your database) and then split your BC copy, then switch the database back out of backup mode.
you then need to issue an "archive log current" from the database. This will create one more archive log which is VERY important to be copied to the backup area (your BC should be mounted on another server or even the same server).
You can easily check this procedure with the DBA, he'll know what to do.
This will give you 100% uptime with consistent and valid backups. We've been doing this at our site for 9 years and all works fine from Oracle 7 to Oracle 10g.