To use BLIB you need to also buy Advanced Client and Veritas Storage
Foundations for Oracle. It's got a hefty upfront price tag.

If you buy the oracle agent and go straight to tape, you could start
doing level 0 backups once a week and level 1 every night (basically a
cumulative incremental) that operates at the database block level
rather than the file level. These still take a while - they have to
scan every block in the database to check the header for the last
change.

What BLIB buys you is that the filesystem keeps track of the changed
blocks, so rather than reading every block header to check the
sequence number, it goes to the filesystem and says "what blocks
changed?". Aparently, oracle 10g has added a feature where the
database will do this for itself. Unfortunately, I haven't played with
that so I couldn't say for certain.

-Charlie

On 11/9/05, Jim Peppas <perf AT peppas DOT gr> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> You will need to use to Oracel agent. This will allow you to take on-line
> backups (Full & incr) . This will release the space you use for the dumps.
> The agent costs though....
>
> To use BLIB , I think you need also to buy Advanced Client (not really sure)
>
> Regards,
>
> Jim Peppas
>
>  ________________________________
>  From: veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> [mailto:veritas-bu-admin AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf
> Of Christopher Costa
> Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 3:40 PM
> To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> Subject: [Veritas-bu] RE: Oracle Backup
>
>
> Gents,
>
> We have an Oracle Database pretty active and large in size (500GB). Today we
> are currently performing RMAN dumps and backing up from the dump area,
> however the backups are full each night and take a while.
>
> Our goal is to save our client some money and shorten the backup window
> nightly.
>
> What is a valid best practice for Oracle database backups? Is it the use of
> BLIB?
>
> Any comments would be appreciated
>
> Thanks
>
> Charles
>