Benefits of TDP for Oracle

[Riley]

Hello all,
I have recently moved into a DBA position and am working at improving our Oracle environment.

Previously, we would shutdown all of our databases for hours at night and have TSM backup the DB files while they were down. I have switched to a hot backup strategy using RMAN. TSM now backs up the Flash Recovery Area and our DBs are up 24x7. This is working really well so far.

I have been looking in to the TSM TDP for Databases product and am still not entirely sure what the list of benefits are. I have spoken to IBM about and they keep telling me that they will have a technical rep contact me, but nothing so far.

Is it simply a more convenient interface between RMAN and TDP? It doesn't provide real-time protection does it?

It would be great to have closer to real-time protection, but not sure the product would be worth the cost if it just meant a more convenient interface.

Thanks for your input.

Riley

 

[GregE]

I'm not really familiar with Flash Recovery Area so I can't speak too much to it, but as for real-time, no TDP for Oracle doesn't give you that. It still backs up on your schedule, and backs up archive logs on a schedule, or if you set a threshold on the filesystem. Either way, it's RMAN doing the work, in partnership with the TDP for Oracle which lets TSM be a storage area with those Oracle files as RMAN sends them, instead of as flat files that have to first be created in your FRA and then backed up as any regular file. I wish I could help more, but I'm just not familiar enough with FRA. But FRA, being a "secondary" place for the Oracle DB, affords you things (time, performance) that backing up directly from the production location does not.

TDP lets RMAN store it's data in TSM in its native RMAN proprietary format.

 

[Riley]

Thanks for the reply Greg, much appreciated.

Good to have some input from someone who uses the product, that is what I was looking for.

Thanks again.