[SunHELP] Help with backup (was: using dd)

[Brian Hechinger]

> (c0t11s0) is partitioned the same way.  My first thought was to mirror the 
> two 17GB partitions, but I can't because Solstice Disk Suite won't mirror 
> the / partition.  I also have an A1000 array with (12) 18GB drives in 

uhm, ahhh, yes you can:

/ on /dev/md/dsk/d0 read/write/setuid/intr/largefiles/logging/onerror=panic/dev=1540000 on Tue Jan 16 16:41:58 2001

> thinking that I could create a snapshot of the / filesystem from the first 
> drive onto the second drive.  This is why I was thinking about using 
> dd.  Then I would backup the second drive and the array (after shutting 
> down the Oracle server and it's related other processes) to tape.  Once the 
> tape backup was finished, I'd have the Oracle server and it's related 
> processes start back up again.  This should all be done via a cron'd script.
>
> Any suggestions on how do deal with these backups?

this is what i would do:

delete your RAID 5 setup on the A1000, make it into two RAID 0 volumes.  make
the two volumes mirror each other.  setup the second internal drive as a mirror
of the first internal disk.

backup procedure:

stop oracle
sync filesystems
split mirrors
start oracle
backup secondary mirrors
merge mirrors

this can very easily be run from a script, and oracle will only be down for
less than 5 minutes.  you may not need 24x7 availability, but i do, so this
is my method, except i have three disk boxes (A5200 in this case) in a three
way mirror so that we can pull a mirror without losing our fault tolerance.

email me privately if you need more help and i'll walk you through the steps
and give you recommendations.  if this machine is that important to your 
company, they should be willing to spend money on it.  get a second A1000 and
run them in RAID 5 internally and RAID 1 externally, that way you can pull a
mirror to do backups from, but without loaing fault tolerance and without
having to buy two more A1000 boxes.

just my $.02

-brian