TriniDBA

This documentation covers a general backup strategy for the client.

Since a lot of work is being done on the Test instance, it is important that the server housing this instance be backed up on a regular basis.

Backup Media

There are several types of backup media available. For example, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, secondary hard drives etc. CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs do not possess the required capacity. Secondary hard drives are likely to fail. For example, if a power spike caused the server hard drives to fail, it may also cause the secondary hard drives to fail.

The best medium for backing up servers is tape media. The tape must be capable of backing up the database and related Oracle Application files, as well as the public folder. Storage requirements for these will grow as the project progresses, and this must be taken into consideration. A rough estimate of the tape capacity is about 200GB. This will easily back up the entire server.

Dell sells LTO tape drives (PowerVault 110T LTO Tape Drive) with some of their servers; perhaps this can be used as a starting point for research on tape drives.

Backup Software

There are several commercial backup and recovery solutions available, such as BrightStor ARCserve. ARCserve handles all aspects of job creation, scheduling and recovery from an intuitive GUI. In addition, ARCserve is certified by Microsoft on all of its server platforms.

Windows also comes with it’s own backup software, NT Backup. NT Backup provides much of the basic functionality as ARCserve. However, NT Backup is designed to be a more interactive solution, that is, an operator has to manually choose the files and directories to back up, and then start the backup.

Ideally, the backup should be automated so that an operator does not have to manually start the backup, and the backup can be scheduled in the middle of the night (say 10 o’clock).

NT Backup can be called from the command line with parameters, so the NT Backup command can be placed into a Windows Command Script (with a .cmd extension), which can then be scheduled. However, this method must be diligently tested to ensure that the scheduled backups are going through.

To view the syntax for NTBackup command line parameters, type ‘ntbackup /?’ at the command prompt:

C:> ntbackup /?

NT Backup loads, then the help file appears with the command-line reference.

To use NT Backup, a ‘selection’ of directories to back up has to be created and saved so that it can be referenced on the command line.

Directories to Backup

At the very least, the directories that should be backed up on oracleserver are

• D:PROD
• D:PROJECT FOLDER

However, if all directories on all of the drives can be backed up, it would be even better.

Regardless of the backup software used, the backup made should be tested on a regular basis. There should be a separate machine, which can be used to test different disaster recovery scenarios.