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Best Practices for Oracle 11g Backup and Recovery using RMAN and Dell EqualLogic Snapshots
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mounted on a different server (the backup server show in Figure 5 on page 19). The snapshots are
mounted as an Oracle instance by the backup server and the database is backed from those volume
snapshots using RMAN. As a result, all benefits of using RMAN backup are realized while also taking
advantage EqualLogic PS Series storage features to minimize impact on production quality of service.
This method provided several benefits, which we present in Section 8, Best practices for backup and
recovery
1.2 Audience
This paper is useful for Oracle Database Administrators, Storage Architects and Linux System
Administrators interested in optimizing the combined features that Oracle RMAN and EqualLogic PS
Series storage arrays provide in meeting backup and recovery requirements. The discussion assumes
that the readers of this document have familiarity with Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administration
and Oracle 11g R2 database installation and administration tasks.
1.3 The rest of this paper
The rest of this paper contains the following sections:
 Section 2, Oracle backup and recovery strategies overview on page 7
 Section 3, Backup solution architecture on page 9
 Section 4, Test design and results on page 13
 Section 5, Test design and results: RMAN offload using EqualLogic snapshots on page 18
 Section 6, Test design and results: point-in-time recovery using Oracle FLASHBACK
DATABASE vs. EqualLogic snapshots on page 24
 Section 7, Conclusions from test results on page 27
 Section 8, Best practices for backup and recovery on page 32