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

3. Use tar to back up the Storage Checkpoint.

$ cd /tmp/ckpt_ro

$ ls

db01

$ tar cvf /tmp/PROD_db01_903937870.tar ./db01

Recovering a Database Using a Storage Checkpoint

Because Storage Checkpoints record the before images of blocks that have changed, you

can use them to do a file-system-based storage rollback to the exact time when the

Storage Checkpoint was taken. You can consider Storage Checkpoints as backups that

are online, and you can use them to roll back an entire database, a tablespace, or a single

database file. Rolling back to or restoring from any Storage Checkpoint is generally very

fast because only the changed data blocks need to be restored.

NOTE Some database changes made after a Storage Checkpoint was taken may make it

impossible to perform an incomplete recovery of the databases after Storage Rollback of

an online or offline Storage Checkpoint using the current control files. For example, you

cannot perform incomplete recovery of the database to the point right before the control

files have recorded the addition or removal of datafiles. To provide recovery options, a

backup copy of the control file for the database is saved under the

/etc/vx/vxdbed/$ORACLE_SID/checkpoint_dir/CKPT_NAME directory immediately

after a Storage Checkpoint is created. You can use this file to assist with database

recovery, if necessary. If possible, both ASCII and binary versions of the control file will

be left under the /etc/vx/vxdbed/$ORACLE_SID/checkpoint_dir/CKPT_NAME

directory. The binary version will be compressed to conserve space. Use extreme caution

when recovering your database using alternate control files.

Suppose a user deletes a table by mistake right after 4:00 p.m., and you want to recover

the database to a state just before the mistake. You created a Storage Checkpoint

(Checkpoint_903937870) while the database was running at 11:00 a.m., and you have

ARCHIVELOG mode enabled.