Oracle DB disaster recovery on later HPUX version

[Mike Jamison]

Our Oracle db and Financials is still running on HP-UX 11.0 patched up to December 2000. For an upcoming disaster recovery test, the DR hotsite will have an N4000 with a much later version of 11.0/patches. Would anyone have any idea if trying to recover on this later OS might affect the recoverability of the Oracle environment? Thanks for any advice.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

You will have no trouble at all.

All you need to do is get a current cold backup in place and start your database.

No problems at all. We've done some practice runs like that. So long as both systems have the core required os patches, you'll be fine.

If you run into specific issues, you may need to relink your executables, depending on how you created the secondary system.

A way to avoid that is to use Ignite Golden Image sysetm replication to create the DR server. That also eliminates the patch issues.

This recovery is possible even on an 11i system btw. The only possible issue is database word size if you recover a 32 bit database on a 64 bit system.

SEP

[twang]

We are running Oracle Financial on HP-UX 11.0 with Quality Pack for HP-UX 11.00, March 2003. I apply OS per half year. And I don't see that the OS patch bundle affect the Oracle environment.

[John Palmer]

It might but youu'd have to do some research with Oracle.

My DR strategy is to recover my version of HP-UX onto the DR server (you can use Ignite for this). Is there any particular reason why you don't intend to do the same?

Regards,
John

[Mike Jamison]

Thanks for the replies. We would normally have used Ignite but in this case our server is a K380 and all the DR hotsite had available was an N4000. I read where the Ignite version for a K-class won't work on an N-class. So we wondering whether we would need to rebuild on the N4000 using our old 11.0 version or just use the latest version that the hotsite provided. Thanks again.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I would make sure that your Disaster Recovery Plan has fairly detailed instructions on how to relink Oracle. That should take care of possible problems. By the way, when testing your DRP, a very good test is to assume that you are dead (you can be a silent on-site ghost) and observe as someone else follows your crystal clear written instructions.

[Volker Borowski]

Hi,

I think it might be required to re-link oracle. Since you will have diffrent libs with a new patchset, it is in my opinion a good idea to have the dynamic lib-part consistent with the static-lib part.

If you just restore the old Oracle-binaries you have them with the static lib-part of the older patchset....
(Just assume a lib-mismatch for kernel async IO)
I do not know if this is dangerous, but a re-link should be the shortest amount of time in your DR scenario, so why to take the risk ?

Volker