Luc Beaudoin wrote:

Hi all

I have to take a new Oracle server (AIX), it's our new Datawarehouse
server ....

I know that I have to stop the Oracle DB before the backup and restart it
after. ..

Well, you really don't need to take if offline at all, depending on how
much work you are willing to spend on configuring the backup.
Most of the DWH systems I have worked on had to be up at all time, as
they constantly processed new inputs from other systems, so you would
probably need to do hot backups. Unless you can have a backup window
that is.

My question is .. the DB has to be up and running as fast as it could ...
so what should be the best way to take that Oracle DB in backup (incr,
image, snapshot or ???)

If you have the TDP for Oracle, it is easy, use Oracle RMAN to do online
incremental 0 and 1 backups, with archive logs. The database will never
have to be taken offline.

If you don't have TDP, well then you can do the good ole' Oracle backup
using some shell scripting. Essentially you would use a prebackup script
to put all tablespaces in backup mode, then backup all files and archive
log files, and the postbackup script would put all tablespaces back in
normal mode.

Regardless of method you will not have to take the database offline.

/A