[linux-lvm] Using LVM to snapshot Oracle

[Luca Berra]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 11:28:56AM -0800, Mitchell Christensen wrote:
>I was wondering about the feasibility of using the LVM snapshot facility
>to backup/restore Oracle.  Does this make sense?
>
Yes
>
>A few issues that I am concerned about are,
>
>*	Would it be any better/faster/cheaper than RMAN (the standard
>Oracle backup facility)?
it will work in a different manner,
rman is more complex to handle. but it will give you some more features,
like integrated archive log management and point in time restores.

>*	Would hot-backups be possible, or would the database need to be
>in a quiescent state?
you can do hot backup, but you will need to tell oracle you are doing
so:

you will need to have oracle in archive log mode

you will need to manually set all tablespaces in backup mode:
alter tablespace XXX begin backup; (for all tablespaces)
alter system switch logfile;
do your backup including the archive logs
alter tablespace XXX end backup; (for all tablespaces)

it is a simple sql script to code

>*	Is anyone else out there doing this (or anything similar)?
sure

>*	Is it reasonable to expect that I could simply take a snapshot
>of all Oracle related files and be able to restore a viable Oracle
>instance from that snapshot?
after restore you will have to "recover database" to apply the archive
logs and make the database consistent.

L.


-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca at comedia.it
        Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
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