Re: Backing up 1 TB database

IANAL_VISTA wrote:
> "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
We've actually done full recoveries of the databases 20+ times for testing. The backup and recovery scripts are pretty complex but, it seems, insure the data integrity.

John Received on Fri Aug 05 2005 - 06:50:50 CDT