Veritas Storage Foundation™ 5.0.1 for Oracle RAC Installation, Configuration, and Administrator's Guide Extracts for the HP Serviceguard Storage Management Suite on HP-UX 11i v3

Storage Checkpoints can only be used to restore from logical errors (for example, a human error).
Because all the data blocks are on the same physical device, Storage Checkpoints cannot be used
to restore files due to a media failure. A media failure requires a database restore from a tape
backup or a copy of the database files kept on a separate medium. The combination of data
redundancy (disk mirroring) and Storage Checkpoints is recommended for highly critical data
to protect them from both physical media failure and logical errors.
Backing up using a Storage Checkpoint
You can back up a database by creating a Storage Checkpoint using the dbed_ckptcreate
command, mount the Storage Checkpoint as read-only using the dbed_ckptmount command,
and then back it up using tools such as tar or cpio.
Table 4-2 Backup Storage Checkpoint Notes
See the dbed_ckptcreate(1M), dbed_ckptmount(1M), tar(1), and cpio(1) manpages for
more information.
Usage notes
In the example procedure, all the database datafiles reside on one VxFS file system named /db01.
To back up a frozen database image using the command line:
1. Create a Storage Checkpoint using the dbed_ckptcreate command.
# /opt/VRTS/bin/dbed_ckptcreate -S PROD -H /oracle/product -o online
Storage Checkpoint Checkpoint_903937870 created
2. Mount the Storage Checkpoint using the dbed_ckptmount command.
# /opt/VRTS/bin/dbed_ckptmount -S PROD -c Checkpoint_903937870 -m \
/tmp/ckpt_ro
If the specified mount point directory does not exist, then dbed_ckptmount creates it before
mounting the Storage Checkpoint, as long as the Oracle DBA user has permission to create
it.
3. Use tar to back up the Storage Checkpoint.
# cd /tmp/ckpt_ro
# ls
db01
# tar cvf /tmp/PROD_db01_903937870.tar ./db01
Recovering a Database Using a Storage Checkpoint
Because Storage Checkpoints record the before images of blocks that have changed, you can use
them to do a file-system-based storage rollback to the exact time when the Storage Checkpoint
was taken. You can consider Storage Checkpoints as backups that are online, and you can use
them to roll back an entire database, a tablespace, or a single database file. Rolling back to or
restoring from any Storage Checkpoint is generally very fast because only the changed data
blocks need to be restored.
Backing up and Recovering the Database Using Storage Checkpoints 35