Unix Backup and Recovery

Physical Backups with a Storage Manager

A commercial backup utility, like those covered in Chapter 5 can actually deliver a completely integrated backup solution for all Oracle databases. That is, there is no need to first back up to an intermediate storage area such as a disk. The commercial utilities can back up to any storage media, then inventory these backups just as they do regular filesystem backups, allowing a “point-and-click” restore. Commercial utilities back up Oracle in one of two ways.

Vendor-Supplied Storage Managers

The first, and less common, method is to use the same basic Oracle commands that oraback.sh uses. Products that do this have simply written their own backup utility. Although most of these were developed before Oracle’s EBU and Recovery Manager (rman ) became widely available, some vendors continue to develop these products because they claim they are faster or more reliable than EBU or rman. One such product is BMC’s SQL Backtrack. Originally designed for Sybase, this product has been ported to both Oracle and Informix. As of this writing, it is a standalone product, since SQL Backtrack does not do volume management. It can, however, interface with other commercial storage managers, allowing them to provide volume management.

Oracle Storage Managers

The second commercial method of backing up Oracle is to use Oracle7’s EBU or Oracle8’s rman. EBU/rman are Oracle internal products that are designed to give a backup utility a stream (or many streams) of ...