RE: Oracle DB Backups on SAN with ALTER SYSTEM SUSPEND

Hemant - If you've got to rework your backup script anyway (and retest it), why not consider switching to RMAN at this time? In my experience, negligible interference with production during a hot backup.

Dennis Williams
DBA, 40%OCP, 100% DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 10:49 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Some of my databases will be migrating to a SAN. Currently, I run hot backups to disk using the ALTER TABLESPACE <tbs> BEGIN BACKUP ;
host cp <file> <target>;
ALTER TABLESPACE <tbs> END BACKUP

On a SAN, where the vendor promises server-less backups using Snapshots, I guess I would have to issue the commands :
ALTER TABLESPACE <tbs1> BEGIN BACKUP
..
..
ALTER TABLESPACE <tbsN> BEGIN BACKUP

ALTER SYSTEM SUSPEND
....> take a "snapshot"

ALTER SYSTEM RESUME ALTER TABLESPACE <tbs1> END BACKUP
..
..
ALTER TABLESPACE <tbsN> END BACKUP

Would that be right ? What are real-world experiences [bugs / time required for the SUSPEND/RESUME, actually flushing all I/O to the disks] ?

The SAN will be a Hitachi 9970 sold by Sun. The databases will be 8.1.7 32-bit / 64-bit on Solaris 8.

Hemant K Chitale
http://hkchital.tripod.com

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