Backing Up Oracle Using Tivoli Storage Management

204 Backing Up Oracle using Tivoli Storage Management

A key thing to remember is that TSM is just a storage repository for RMAN

backups. RMAN is responsible for creating all the backup objects and the

archivelogs. TDP for Oracle is responsible for taking what RMAN gives and

passing that on to the TSM server. TSM server is responsible for storing the

backup objects and the archivelogs, and then retrieving them when asked. If

RMAN creates a corrupt backup object or corrupt archivelog, TSM will store it

and retrieve it as corrupt. As TSM is not necessary to do an RMAN backup,

you can eliminate TSM as a problem by creating an RMAN backup on a local

file system. If RMAN fails creating a backup to disk, then it will probably also

fail using TDP for Oracle. In this situation, you would then check the Oracle

setup.

Another useful way to isolate a problem is to compare a failing machine with a

working one. Then you can see what is the same and what is different. Are

they using the same API level, TDP for Oracle level, Oracle level and fixpack,

TSM server? Do the nodes belong to the same domain and have the same

settings? What are the client options file differences between the failing and

the working machine?

Try to use as many of the defaults as possible. Using environment variables

when not required increases the likelihood of configuration errors.

B.4 List of logfiles

The following is a collection of logfiles from which to get valuable information

for problem determination:

• dsierror.log

The file reside in the directory specified by the DSMI_LOG environment

variable. It contains the most valuable information for problem

determination for our purpose. Each entry may refer to a TSM API error

number. A description of those errors can be found in Appendix D, “API

Return Codes”, in the book: Tivoli Storage Manager: Using the Application

Program Interface, SH26-4123.

• dsmsched.log

By default, TSM stores the schedule log information in a file named

dsmsched.log. The default name can be overwritten by specifying the

SCHEDLOGNMAME option in the client option files.

• sbtio.log

This file is created by Oracle and normally resides in the udump directory

of the database instance.