Re: Periodic restart plusses and minuses?

Hans Forbrich <news.hans_at_telus.net> wrote in message news:<KDK8d.32806$N%.31956_at_edtnps84>...

> One of the local DBAs has his heart set on nightly shutdowns to do cold
> backups. Another DBA wants to go for online backups. (Archive logging is
> up and active.)

Ay!...... been there, done that.

> The debate has gone all over silly territory and back and is now at:
> "Shutting down the database will waste all the automatic tuning benefits
> achieved from the system finding stability in the cache, etc.. It can take
> hours, even months to get the system stable."

Gross exageration, the "months" thing. IMHO. Never ever saw such a case. It either is a very weird load system or someone is on vapours...

> Does anyone have pointers to documents, white papers, books, web sites,
> metalink note, etc. that I can drop on their desks to move them off this
> 'shutdown detunes the database' discussion?

I don't think you'll find anything in that area, but...

>
> (Once they're over this, I hope the discussion can get back to a pure
> business benefits discussion!)
>

Weeeeelll, is it worth even letting it move away from the business benefits?

My point is: cold backups vs hot backups is a decision that should be based only on business requirements: does the business require 24X7 operation? If yes, then hot backups is the only option. If not then cold backups (if there is enough window) are an equaly valid option.

My personal choice would be RMAN, but in Windows that may pose some minor problems. At least I've had some in the past. Mostly due to my lack of deep knowledge about it in that environment.

Cold backups is a good one in that environment. Particularly if hardware assisted: shadow volumes, yadda yadda. I hate to use the old chestnut. So I'll just say it is highly contingent on the business requirements and pretty much little else... Received on Wed Oct 06 2004 - 08:07:40 CDT