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Best Practices for Oracle 11g Backup and Recovery using RMAN and Dell EqualLogic Snapshots
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4 Test design and results: RMAN
First, we evaluated Oracle backup and recovery solutions using the native RMAN utility. Then we used
EqualLogic snapshots along with RMAN to offload the backup processing to a backup server. We also
compared point-in-time recovery methods using Oracle’s FLASHBACK DATABASE utility vs. using
EqualLogic snapshots.
Test plan summary:
• Measure performance impact of performing RMAN backup on the production database
supporting TPC-C transaction load for 4000 concurrent users.
o Backup operations included both RMAN full and incremental approaches.
o Recovery operations were conducted from full and incremental backups.
• Evaluate the benefits of offloading the backup processing from the production database server
to a dedicated backup server. Use EqualLogic based snapshots of production database
volumes as the backup source data.
• For point-in-time recovery operations, compare use of Oracle’s FLASHBACK DATABASE vs.
EqualLogic snapshots.
4.1 RMAN full backup and recovery
In this phase of our testing we ran typical RMAN backup and recovery operations, where the database
server also hosts RMAN processing. We used the system configuration shown in Figure 1. Figure 3
below illustrates the data flow.