I don't know the answer to your question, but I do have a suggestion. Why
not have one script for each DB on the client in addition to the one your
using now, and if a DB backup fails run that script from the client? This
will keep your policy number down but allow the DBA to re-run individual
backups if needed. Just a thought.

Regards,
 
Patrick Whelan
VERITAS Certified NetBackup Support Engineer for UNIX.
VERITAS Certified NetBackup Support Engineer for Windows.

netbackup AT whelan-consulting.co DOT uk



-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of nellis
Sent: 30 April 2009 22:23
To: VERITAS-BU AT MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN DOT EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Backing up multiple Oracle db's from a single host


Hello everyone, first I'll go ahead and apologize for such a long post.

I'd like to ask everyone; what works best for those of you backing up
multiple Oracle db's from a single host. I have several Oracle 10g servers I
backup. Each has anywhere from 1 to 20 db instances. I use a single policy
and a common path & script name to backup the Oracle servers. This for me
keeps the number of policies I have to manage down to a minimum. 

Our dba's have asked for one policy to be setup per DB. The reasoning behind
this is that they want the flexibility to restart a failed backup without
the restart initiating a backup of all DB's on servers. I told them that
what they should be doing on failed DB backups is from the "activity
monitor", right click on the failed Job ID and select restart. 

Here is where my lack of "in depth knowledge" of how NBU works with the
Oracle RMAN API when a single stream fails. 

They asked, how does NBU know to just restart the backup for the DB that
failed? The best "high level" reply I could come up with was that NBU tracks
which DB piece it's backing up in a log and when a restart is initiated,
it's able to request a backup of just the DB which that piece was associated
with via calls to the Oracle RMAN API. 

In other words, restarting a single failed Jod ID from "activity monitor"
for a backup stream associated with an Oracle backup does not mean that NBU
looks at the policy and executes the backup script specified in the backup
selection for all servers or just one server which is a member of that
policy.

Am I wrong? 
How does a restart work with Oracle? 
How do you backup Oracle servers which host multiple instances?
What are the advantages and disadvantages if any with one policy per
instance?

Having a policy for each to me sounds like a nightmare in more than one way
but I'd REALLY appreciate anyone's input here.

Thanks in advance to everyone that replies!

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