Second attempt to post this. First one doesn't look like it made it.

Although SAP makes provisions to do hot backups of Oracle databases within 
their implementation, I still like to complete a FULL backup of the server 
(including the databases) on the weekend. To accomplish this, I have a CRON job 
in place that executes the SAP supplied database shutdown commands (as SAP 
admin user) to create a window of opportunity to backup the SAP servers (there 
are 5 of them). Once the backups are complete, another CRON job restarts the 
databases using a SAP supplied start command. This method has worked well up 
until now because the SAP backups have been isolated to their own NetBackup 
master server and L1000 library (4 DLT drives). This will soon change as I 
migrate the SAP backups to another master server that is already supporting the 
backups for about 125 other non-SAP servers. This environment is a SUN E450 
with an L11000 tape library (6 DLT drives). All of the drives are assigned to a 
single storage unit which means when I migrate SAP backups, I will not be able 
to guarantee a drive will be available to backup the SAP servers within the 
window carved out by the CRON jobs. I can control the priorities of the SAP 
backups so they will start before anything else, but I have some servers that 
take hours to backup. If 6 of them happen to be running at the same time, it's 
tough luck for SAP. What I'd like to do is use the BPSTART and BPEND scripts to 
shutdown and restart the Oracle databases when the backup job actually starts. 
SAP, however, requires you to be the SAP admin user in order to use their 
supplied scripts to shutdown the databases and since I can't su to the SAPADM 
user in a script, I'm getting all kinds of errors from the STOPSAP and STARTSAP 
scripts because the proper environment is not set up (only SAPADM can set it 
up). Aside from modifying a copy of the SAP scripts, which would create a 
maintenance headache for me, does anyone have any other ideas? Also keep in 
mind that I've only been working in the UNIX environment for about a year and a 
half (I'm a mainframe storage guy by 
learning a lot, I do depend heavily on the kindness of UNIX strangers. Any 
information anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Dennis F. Dwyer
Enterprise Storage Manager
Tampa Electric Company

(813) 225-5181  - Voice
(813) 275-3599  - FAX

Visit our corporate website at www.tecoenergy.com