Re: Backing up 1 TB database

"john.mcconnell_at_jhmi.edu" <john.mcconnell_at_jhmi.edu> wrote in news:1123165903.190915.236030_at_f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

> Hello,
> We're implementing SAP on IBM AIX V5.3 with Oracle 9i and we have
> several databases that are almost 1 TB in size. Currently we do the
> backup by:
> 1) put db in backup mode
> 2) flash (IBM shark) from the source disk to a target disk
> 3) take db out of backup mode
> 4) mount target disk
> 5) use "save" command to back up to Legato
> 6) unmount target disk
> So, every day I'm doing a full backup of my database. This is getting
> (and will get worse) very time consuming. (We've not implemented
> production yet and it's already 1TB!)
>
> How do other people handle backups of databases that are this large?
> I've heard there are products that do incremental backups--would that
> work with the "flash" scenario I've mentioned? Is Legato the way to
> go? Is there something better?
>
> Sorry if these are stupid questions... I'm an AIX admin...
>
> Thank you
>

My advice is to be SURE that you actually test recovery. I know from 1st hand experience that Net. App. snapshots were not viable means of backups if they were taken on an active OLTP system. The snapshots taken during periods of low activity still were NOT 100% reliable; only about 8 out of 10 sucessfully restored.

Keep in mind that 1 data point does not make a trend.

HTH & YMMV Received on Thu Aug 04 2005 - 20:10:44 CDT