Known issues with performing incremental backups of Oracle Databases???

[Shaun Aldrich_1]

Hello Everyone,

I don't know alot about Oracle but are there anyway issues with performing incremental backups through Omniback II on a Oracle database?

If I did one Full Backup a week and the rest at incremental level 1 and I had problems with the database then I would have to Restore from the weekly full backup and the last level 1 incremental backup. Is this correct?

Are there any issues with the Oracle Database after restoring from the Full Backup then the last level 1 incremental from a few days later?

Your help is greatly appreciated...

S Aldrich

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Normally an incremental oracle backup will not buy you much because in almost all of the cases
every file in the database will have been touched. Incremental backups do not look at
the block level but at the file level so that if any part of a file is changed then the entire file is backed up. If you are backing up a large amount of other data (i.e. other filesystems) which do not change much with the same backup specification then perhaps an incremental makes sense.

[Stephen Tatrai]

Are you using the ORACLE module for OMNIBACK?
We do not user the ORACLE module rather we stop ORACLE and then take a backup the incremental seem to backup up the same ammount as the full for the ORACLE database files.
ORACLE also supports a hot backup.

[ajax13]

If the archive log is on for the database, and not many archive logs generated( 1 or 2 a day), you could take a full backup weekly then only backup the archive logs, these archive logs contains all the transaction done to the database. In case recovery needed you will get the datafile need to be recovered from your backup then database will let you know what archive log he is looking for.

If you want to do incremntal backups, and your database is 8 and above you could use RMAN to do that for you.

[Volker Borowski · Accepted solution]

Hi Shaun,

if you do not use the ORACLE-Integration, be sure with your DBA, that your database is shutdown during your backup.

If you like to backup Oracle while it is open, you can use the scripts I provided here for Omniback native filesystem backup.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x6eb053921f1ad5118fef0090279cd0f9,00.html

Let your DBA check them first, if they fit your needs. And be sure, to keep a good track of your archive-log-files, your controlfiles and how to use them to recover your database to a consistent state, after you restored what you need for recovery.

Volker