RE: backup best practices

From: Johnson, George <GJohnson_at_GAM.COM>
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2005 16:49:58 +0100
Message-ID: <ECD91EB68018C04CA1B6801EE47A910F3A368A8E@ntas-ldn15.gam.com>

I would mention what a previous poster said about an O/S. It's good to bounce every so often to check that if you needed to, you can do it in an emergency, you know the system can auto-recover by itself. The number of times we have left systems up while changes have been made, then we bounce 'em only to find that such and such a service never started or the DB never started 'cos the pfile got changed and never tested. The spfile goes some way to helping by stopping people who don't know what they are doing, from simply editing a text pfile and messing the format up.

Personally I would leave 'em up 24/7, that's what archives and hot backups are for, but I get voted down every time I raise it at my shop! So we are stuck circa 1995, one guaranteed cold backup once a week of all databases, without fail!

-----Original Message-----
From: Bobak, Mark [mailto:Mark.Bobak_at_il.proquest.com] Sent: 07 Oct 2005 15:51
To: swhite_at_lifetouch.com; Oracle-L_at_freelists.org Subject: RE: backup best practices

Well, part of this will depend on whether you're running a "real" O/S...;-) I'll let folks decide for themselves what a "real" O/S is or is not....;-)

Seriously, though, in my opinion, a production database in archivelog mode should almost never need to be bounced. I see no reason for scheduled bounces or outages. Since 9i, when you can set SGA_MAX_SIZE and dynamically adjust many, many parameters, there are fewer and fewer reasons to need to bounce. A properly implemented hot backup strategy should be able to provide for recovery from any type of media failure. I can't think of any scenario where a cold backup is "better" than a hot backup. I can't think of any reason to bounce a instance. All you do is thrash the buffer cache and library cache.

My two cents,

-Mark

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Susan White
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 10:38 AM
To: 'Oracle-L_at_FreeLists.org'
Subject: backup best practices

Should off-line backups (RMAN or otherwise) be a part of a standard backup strategy? In the "old" days, cold backups were recommended for consistency - or at least that's how I understood it. Now, it seems that these are not deemed essential. What is the recommended best practice for off-line/on-line backups?

Related to this: Should the DB be "bounced" occasionally? In my last oracle class, this was implied, although not stated. Any thoughts

Thanks

Susan White

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Received on Fri Oct 07 2005 - 10:58:48 CDT