Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] [Fwd: Re: Another bpstart, oracle and streams question]

2008-02-01 11:41:39
Subject: [Veritas-bu] [Fwd: Re: Another bpstart, oracle and streams question]
From: Dave Markham <dave.markham AT fjserv DOT net>
To: "veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu" <veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:33:13 +0000

--- Begin Message ---
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Another bpstart, oracle and streams question
From: Dave Markham <dave.markham AT fjserv DOT net>
To: Jeff Lightner <jlightner AT water DOT com>
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:55:39 +0000
Cheers. Yeah I guess i just wrote rack by habit :)

I could create a separate policy in netbackup and do RAW file backup of the voting disk. Its another thing to admin schedule etc but it may work.

For the moment i have just done the following in my bpstart_notify.<policy>

change $OUTF

        #Edited by DaveM to create file per stream
        OUTF=/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/BPSTART_CALLED.$STREAM_NUMBER

Then added the section at the end before the final exit.


#Backup oracle voting disk
VOTEDISK=/opt/app/oracle/oradev/crs/votedsk1
STAGE=/usr/openv/netbackup/ORA_TEMP_AREA

#Only do this once per backup
#trying by STREAM_NUMBER=1
if [ "$STREAM_NUMBER" = "1" ];then
        echo "Stream match at STREAM_NUMBER [$STREAM_NUMBER]. Running voting disk 
backup." >> $OUTF
        if [ ! -d "$STAGE" ];then
                mkdir $STAGE
        fi

        #Check voting disk is a sym link
        if [ -h "$VOTEDISK" ];then
                dd if=$VOTEDISK of=$STAGE/votingdisk bs=4k >/dev/null 2>&1
                #Exit 1 if above failed
                if [ $? -ne 0 ];then
                        echo "dd process had a problem. Exiting" >>$OUTF
                        exit 1
                fi
        else
                #Exit with error
                echo "Votingdisk [$VOTEDISK] wasnt a sym link. Exiting" >>$OUTF
                exit 1
        fi
fi

exit 0



Jeff Lightner wrote:
RMAN can backup raw devices - we'll be doing that on our latest RAC
installation on Linux (the earlier one was using OCFS filesystem but
still had raw voting disk/OCR which is what prompted my question).
For that matter so can NBU itself can backup raw devices without RMAN.
We have some older systems that use raw devices for Oracle DB (no RAC)
and our backups for those are done by shutting down the database and
letting NBU do a raw device backup.   We know it works because we've
used that backup to restore to another system when doing a data refresh.

I'm just wondering about the voting disk and OCR for RAC since they are
part of CRS (a/k/a Oracle Clusterware).  CRS is a higher level product
than the database (that is to say you install everything else AFTER you
have CRS working) so I was wondering if there was a backup/restore
methodology for CRS itself that included the voting disk and OCR.

P.S.  Probably was your spell checker "fixing" it for you but just in
case it wasn't - It is "RAC" not "rack".  RAC = Real Application
Cluster.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Markham [mailto:dave.markham AT fjserv DOT net] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2008 5:24 AM
To: Jeff Lightner
Cc: Ed Wilts; veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Another bpstart, oracle and streams question

Im no rack expert but the DBA's have said they need that file backing up. As its a sym link to a raw slice im doing it via dd and the block size they recommend.

Im not sure if the rman job can actually do it as it may not be part of the DB that Rman hooks into.

Its only a 256mb file so i dont think it would harm to back it up if you

are unsure.

Are the STREAMS issue, im actually thinking what i want may be a bit easier than running a hot oracle backup.

I just need this job to run once so coulndt if do an if statement something like below :-

if [ $STREAM = 1 ]
then
do the checks and dd etc
fi

This would then hold the first stream until the dd job had finished and then back it up.

Hmm one issue i guess is i need to make sure the stream im checking for is the same stream as the file system the voting disk will be backed up
to.

Does anyone have confirmation of the STREAM variables passed to bpstart_notify ??

cheers


Jeff Lightner wrote:
Curious about this thread - so far as I know we're not doing anything special for backing up voting disk and OCR for Oracle RAC (unless the DBAs somehow set this up via RMAN to the policies we created in NBU). Is this something we should be doing?


------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] *On Behalf Of *Ed
Wilts
*Sent:* Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:50 AM
*To:* dave.markham AT fjserv DOT net
*Cc:* veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
*Subject:* Re: [Veritas-bu] Another bpstart, oracle and streams
question
The short answer is: don't even try if you have multiple disks. You *may* be able to get away with it now using the parent/child job functionality that got added in 6.0 but we haven't tested this, having

given up on a long time ago after a multi-year battle.

Sure, you can get it work most of the time, and many people do. However, there are many, many edge cases where this will break down, and if you do go down this route, you'll find some them eventually. You'll find cases where the bpstart didn't run or the bpend didn't run, or they'll run twice.

We definitely had a really, really bright guy working on the bpstart/bpend scripts and he could not solve the problem so that it was 100% reliable. We simply wanted to put Oracle into hotbackup mode,

do the backups, and take it out of hotbackup mode. Like you said, you'll be writing some logic around it. However, you'll be writing and

writing and writing, tweaking it regularly as you run into all of the edge conditions and you'll cuss and swear as you stumble over them. Bottom line: it can't be done reliably.

Use a different method of coordinating this.

.../Ed

On Jan 31, 2008 8:57 AM, Dave Markham <dave.markham AT fjserv DOT net <mailto:dave.markham AT fjserv DOT net>> wrote:

Guys im running Netbackup 6.0mp4 and a number of oracle SSO media
servers backing themselves up. Solaris9/10

This has been mentioned before many times im sure and i found a thread
on it called 'Yet another bpstart/bpend questions' but i dont have a
copy of it to reply to.

Basically as im running a UNIX backup (forget oracle for the moment)
and
we have multistreams set and all_local_drives directive, a
bpstart_notify script we have which does this (there are extra checks
etc also):-

dd if=/path/to/votedsk1 of=$STAGING/votingdisk bs=4k >/dev/null 2>&1

..is obviously running on each stream which is kicked off.

I just need it to run once.

There was talk about the bpstart script taking a STREAMS parameter but
it doesnt say so within the /opt/openv/netbackup/bin/goodies version
so
can anyone confirm there are STREAMS variables passed to it?

I was thinking ( perhaps like many people ) to create some lock file
and
then remove it. This leads to all sorts of issues regarding streams
restarting, certain ones finishing before others etc and so i'd need
to
create some good logic around it.

What are people doing in the wild?

I just need the above command to run once per backup.



--
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org <mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org>

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