Veritas NetBackup™ for Oracle Administrator's Guide
- Introduction
- NetBackup for Oracle QuickStart
- Installing NetBackup for Oracle
- About linking Oracle RMAN with NetBackup for UNIX
- Oracle policy configuration
- Preparing for NetBackup for Oracle configuration
- Instance management for an Oracle Intelligent Policy
- About Oracle Intelligent Policies (OIP)
- About script- or template-based Oracle policies
- About adding backup selections to an Oracle policy
- About configuring the run-time environment
- About creating templates and shell scripts
- About creating RMAN scripts manually
- Performing backups and restores of Oracle
- About NetBackup for Oracle backups
- About NetBackup for Oracle restores
- Using NetBackup for Oracle in a Microsoft Windows cluster environment
- Guided Recovery
- Troubleshooting Guided Recovery
- NetBackup for Oracle with Snapshot Client
- About NetBackup for Oracle with Snapshot Client
- How NetBackup for Oracle with Snapshot Client works
- About configuring Snapshot Client with NetBackup for Oracle
- Restoring NetBackup for Oracle from a snapshot backup
- About configuring NetBackup for Oracle block-level incremental backups on UNIX
- About Snapshot Client effects
- About Oracle support for Replication Director
- Troubleshooting
- Troubleshooting RMAN backup or restore errors
- Appendix A. Real Application Clusters
- Appendix B. Best practices for protecting Oracle RAC with NetBackup
- Appendix C. Deduplication best practices
- Appendix D. Snapshot Client support of SFRAC
- Appendix E. Script-based block-level incremental (BLI) backups without RMAN on UNIX and Linux systems
- Verifying installation requirements for BLI backups without RMAN
- Creating NetBackup policies for script-based BLI backup
- Creating notify scripts for BLI backups
- Performing backups and restores
- About troubleshooting backup or restore errors
- Appendix F. XML Archiver
- NetBackup for Oracle XML export and XML import
- About XML export templates and shell scripts
- Performing an XML export archive
- Restoring an XML export archive
- Troubleshooting XML export or XML import errors
- Appendix G. Register authorized locations
About the Storage Checkpoint facility and NetBackup for Oracle
The BLI backup methodology uses the Storage Checkpoint facility in the Veritas File System (VxFS). This facility is available through the Storage Foundation for Oracle.
The VxFS Storage Checkpoint facility keeps track of the file blocks modified by the database since the last backup. NetBackup with BLI backup leverages this facility to back up only changed blocks for an incremental backup. The entire volume or file is not backed up.
VxFS Storage Checkpoint is a disk-efficient and I/O-efficient snapshot of file systems. A Storage Checkpoint provides a consistent, stable view of a file system at the instant when the file system was snapped or checkpointed. Instead of making a physically separate copy of the file system, a Storage Checkpoint tracks changed file system blocks. Disk space is saved and I/O overhead is significantly reduced.
Because the changed blocks are tracked, the VxFS Storage Checkpoint enables BLI backups. VxFS Storage Checkpoint facility provides a consistent view of file systems, which allows BLI backup to freeze the database image during database backups.
The Storage Checkpoint operation is similar to the snapshot file system mechanism. However, the Storage Checkpoint persists after a system restart which is unlike a snapshot. Also, the Storage Checkpoint operation is totally transparent to backup administrators. The Checkpoint image is managed and available only through NetBackup or through the VxDBA utility for database backup available with the Veritas Storage Foundation.
For more information on Storage Checkpoints, see the Veritas Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide.
You can take a Storage Checkpoint while the database is online or offline. To take a Storage Checkpoint while the database is online, you must enable archive log mode. During the creation of the Storage Checkpoint, all tablespaces are placed in backup mode.