backup while system is up

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

Dear All..
I have a Tru64 UNIX V 5.1 system connected to disks via HSG80 controller. My questions is: Can I mirror and stripe (Raid 0+1) these disks in order to take a backup of the system while oracle databases and disks are availave to users by using LSM?

Mohamed

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

Let me re-phrase the question and provide a little discription of what is on my mind:

I want to decrease the amount of time when we bring Oracle databases down for backup purposes. What I though of is to mirror all our disks, then at the time I want to get a full dump of the disks, I just can freeze the databases, unmount the mirror disks, then unfreeze the databases.(If there is such a command in Oracle)

At that time, the original disks are available for users to access, while the mirror disks have a "snapshot" of the data and I can back it up any time. When I am done, I can add them to their sets again.

Doing this with HSG80 Cloning is not going to work because I want to automate it.
So I thought about LSM and AdvFS utilities.

Will this work??

Thoughts??, Comments??, any one did it before??

Mohamed

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

there is really no need to stop oracle for backup. You can either use rman to backup the database to disk/tape or just set the tablespaces with begin/end backup and backup the database online.

hth,

Michael

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

Well, RMAN is used to backup the Oracle stuff, while I want to backup for the whole system (Unix level backup)(Take a full dump of the system)

[Uwe Zessin]

Mohamed,

you can automate HSG snapshots (requires a 'special' firmware card for this) and
cloning (it is just splitting off mirror-set members, so it works in all ACS variants)
with the 'HP StorageWorks Command Scripter', which is an extra-cost product.
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/sanworks/commandscripter/index.html

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Hi,

if you have enough space on disk and the tape is big enough, you could dump with rman to disk and then as usually to tape.
Probably you might want to use the begin/end backup command in oracle and then you can backup the database while it is online. Just backup the archive logs last after a switch logfile so you get the end backups on tape too.

hth,

Michael

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

Do you mean that I can shutdown Oracle, take a snapshot of the disks through the HSG80, mount those disks again so the UNIX can see them, then back them up. and I can add them back when I am done?

Can this be all automated?

[Mohamed K Ahmed]

Michael,
I am not concerned about the Oracle backups/Exports, we take exports every night while Oracle is running, I want to take a UNIX level dump for all the system while it is running oracle.
Now, I shutdown the Oracle databases in the weekends, take a full vdump backup of all the disks and then bring Oracle up again.
Tha problem is that the UNIX level dumps takes 12 hours to finish, and at that period of time, No access to Oracle

MO

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

Mohamed,

when you use
alter tablespace begin/end backup
you do not have to shutdown oracle at all!
Just backup the whole system.

Michael

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

One more,

when you shutdown oracle, you clear the cache and that has to rebuid after startup making the applications slower.

Michael