Zero Downtime Backup of MaxDB database with HP Data Protector

 On the application server, MaxDB’s dbmcli command resumes MaxDB’s logwriter process

– This post-exec script is executed at the application level.

– The time difference between the execution of pre-exec and post-exec scripts, both at

application-level, constitutes the effective downtime of the backup.

 SMISA prepares the backup server to mount the filesystem.

 SMISA presents the filesystem to the backup server.

 DA starts to stream data from the replica to the backup server.

 DA finishes streaming and MA unloads the medium.

 SMISA dismounts the filesystem mounted previously.

 SMIS removes presentations of the replica on the backup server.

 BSM completes.

Configuring backup specifications

It is important to bear in mind that the scripted MaxDB--ZDB solution integrates a regular Data

Protector--ZDB file system backup with a MaxDB-DP integration backup in order to backup a MaxDB

database instance with minimal downtime. These two separate sub-solutions collaborate to leverage

the best of each: negligible downtime of MaxDB-ZDB backups combined with the convenience of a

fully-fledged MaxDB-DP integration backing up archive logs, to secure and restore the database.

You need to create two separate backup specifications:

 Script-assisted MaxDB-ZDB, of type file-system ZDB.

Compiled scripts have to be incorporated into the script-assisted MaxDB-ZDB backup specification,

which will back up MaxDB’s data volumes.

 MaxDB-DP integration, which must be started only as Trans backup.

Deploy the already established MaxDB-DP integration to backup only archive log files. Note that it is

possible to back up the entire MaxDB instance online using the MaxDB-DP integration, however, that

would result in a plain online backup of the MaxDB instance instead of a Zero Downtime Backup.

You can schedule both these kinds of backup.

Using this joint approach, you can leverage the relatively minute downtime of ZDB and complement it

with the MaxDB-DP integration’s log backups to be able to restore and recover to any point in time or

to the latest point in time.