oracle hotbackups with omniback & without RMAN

[Paul Singh]

Hi..I have omniback 4.1, hp 11.0, oracle 8.1.7. I need to do oracle hotbackups with using omniback directly to tape. I DONT/CANT have RMAN. Can someone please help me out.????Also, If I get the omniback online extension for the database backups, is RMAN a requirement to do the oracle hot backups...???

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,

The last question first. OmniBack Online integration for Oracle uses RMAN (it is required).

It is possible to do a Oracle online backup without RMAN. This is described in the Oracle 8 Backup and Recovery Guide,Performing Operating System Backup. You have to write a pre_exec script which switch the database to backup mode and then perform an filesystem backup.

There is also other methods, for example Split Mirror Backup. With this you must shut down the database for a short moment when splitting the mirror.

[Paul Singh]

Thanks for replying..for my understanding, what is the benefit of getting omniback add-on, if I can do database hotbackup without the add-on..Is it just matter of automating the backups & writing the alter tablespace tsp1 begin/end backup command??

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
Why use the OmniBack Online Integration (and Oracle RMAN) ?
- Better performance.
- Perhaps easier and safer to use.
- Incremental backups possible.
- RMAN is a advanced tool with a number of features, (compared to a simple filesystem backup).
You can read about pros/cons with different backup methods in the Oracle Backup and Recovery Guide.

[Duncan Greenwood]

>> Is it just matter of automating the backups & writing the alter tablespace tsp1 begin/end backup command??

More or less ...

You also need to think about protecting control files and archive logs.

Ask your DBAs which tool they would prefer to be using at 3am on a Sunday morning when the database is trashed ;-)

RMAN is a powerful but complex tool and is overkill for small or simple databases. OTOH, it is the only way to get incremental backups of a very large database.

hth

D
#

[Paul Singh]

couple of facts:

1.I've the automated scripts to do the hotbackups but dont have enuf disk space on the system to do the hotbackups to disk & then to tape...

2.the database is around 15 GB..couldn't use any of the os utilities to do the hotbackups eg..fbackup, tar, cpio, as fbackup doesn't work with no rewind option & tar/cpio cant be used for files larger than 2gb..& want to control the writing to diff tapes in the library ie. do the database backups to first 2 tapes, os to next 2 & misc to next 2..

Question: If I want to use the scripts with omniback, how do I do that.. & can/should I put all the tablespaces in backup mode, do the backups & then end theb backup mode.. I have never done that. I've read that there will be lot of redo log generation & lot of resources will be used...can u shed some light.??

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,
I can give you an example of a script for setting a number os tablespaces in backup mode. This script should be run as a pre_exec script from Omniback.

A corresponding post_exec script must be run as post_exec script (run after backup). This script is similar to my example but with the END BACKUP statement.

Before doing this you must identify all online tablespaces and their datafiles and create a datalist in OmniBack which back up this files.



#!/bin/ksh
ORACLE_BASE=/vol01/app/oracle
ORACLE_HOME=/vol01/app/oracle/product/7.3.4
ORACLE_SID=""
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin:/opt/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/ucb
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/dt/lib
ORACLE_TERM=sun5
ORA_NLS=$ORACLE_HOME/ocommon/nls/admin
TNS_ADMIN=$ORACLE_HOME/network/admin
NLS_LANG=swedish_sweden.we8iso8859p1
LANGUAGE=$NLS_LANG
export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH ORACLE_TERM ORA_NLS TNS_ADMIN NLS_LANG LANGUAGE
su oracle -c svrmgrl << EOF
connect internal
ALTER TABLESPACE ts1 BEGIN BACKUP;
ALTER TABLESPACE ts2 BEGIN BACKUP;
ALTER TABLESPACE ts3 BEGIN BACKUP;
EOF

I will strongly recommend reading about this in the Oracle Backup and Recovery guide.