Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 for Oracle RAC Configuration Guide Extracts for HP Serviceguard Storage Management Suite, Second Edition, May 2008

Using Storage Checkpoints and Storage Rollback
Backing up and Recovering the Database Using Storage Checkpoints
Chapter 4
48
Backing up and Recovering the Database Using Storage
Checkpoints
Storage Checkpoints can be created by specifying one of the following options: online,
offline, or instant. To create a Storage Checkpoint with the online option, the database
should be online and you must enable ARCHIVELOG mode for the database. For the offline
option, the database should be offline.
During the creation of the Storage Checkpoint, the tablespaces are placed in backup
mode. Because it only takes a few seconds to take a Storage Checkpoint, the extra redo
logs generated while the tablespaces are in online-backup mode are very small. You can
roll back the entire database or individual tablespaces or datafiles to an online or offline
Storage Checkpoint. After the rollback is complete, you may roll the database forward to
restore the database if you have used an online Storage Checkpoint.
For the instant option, the database should be online and it can be running in either
ARCHIVELOG or NOARCHIVELOG mode. You can only roll back the entire database to an
instant Storage Checkpoint. Rolling back individual tablespaces or datafiles to an
instant Storage Checkpoint is not possible. After the rollback is complete, you need to
perform database recovery. Rolling the database forward is not supported; that is, you
cannot apply archived redo logs.
To allow the easiest recovery, always keep ARCHIVELOG mode enabled, regardless of
whether the database is online or offline when you create Storage Checkpoints.
Verifying a Storage Checkpoint Using the Command Line
After creating a Storage Checkpoint and before using it to back up or restore a database,
you can verify that the Storage Checkpoint is free of errors.
To verify that a Storage Checkpoint is error-free using the command line.
1. Create and mount a Storage Checkpoint.
$ /opt/VRTS/bin/dbed_ckptcreate -S PROD -H /oracle/product \
-o online
Storage Checkpoint Checkpoint_903937870 created.
$ mkdir /tmp/ckpt_ro
$ /opt/VRTS/bin/dbed_ckptmount -S PROD -c Checkpoint_903937870 \
-m /tmp/ckpt_ro
If the specified mount point directory does not exist, then dbed_ckptmount creates it
before mounting the Storage Checkpoint, as long as the Oracle DBA user has
permission to create it.
2. Examine the contents of the Storage Checkpoint.
$ ls -l /tmp/ckpt_ro/dbvol_82/dbinst1
Table 4-1 Storage Checkpoint Notes
Usage notes See the dbed_ckptcreate(1M) and dbed_ckptmount(1M) manual
pages for more information.