[geeks] DST hell

[Mike Meredith]

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 03:36:20 -0400, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Which databases are you using that require shutting down for this?
> 
> Oracle.
> 
> > Even MySQL can do live backups...
> 
> That's fine if you're using a database-native method.  We're using
> both a database-native live export as well as a simple dump of the
> datafiles.
> 
> It's just a "belt and suspenders" thing.  It takes marginally less
> time to restore the files, run a checksum, and bring it back up, than
> to set the database up and reimport.

For the really paranoid, you can do an export, do a simple dump of the
datafiles, and use rman to do an export as well. I won't admit that
work managed to accidentally do all three for over 6 months without
anyone noticing :)

Incidentally you can switch Oracle into 'hot backup mode' to keep the
database up whilst doing a safe dump of the data files, but I'm sure
you already know that. It's the way that many magical 3rd party 'we'll
backup your Oracle databases whilst the database stays up' tools, work.

-- 
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
 Power corrupts; Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
 -- Vint Cerf