VERITAS FlashSnap Point-In-Time-Copy Solutions Administrator's Guide

Database Recovery

You can use VERITAS Storage Checkpoints to implement efficient backup and recovery of

databases that have been laid out on VxFS file systems. A Storage Checkpoint allows you to roll

back an entire database, a tablespace, or a single database file to the time that the Storage

Checkpoint was taken. Rolling back to or restoring from any Storage Checkpoint is generally very

fast because only the changed data blocks need to be restored.

Storage Checkpoints can also be mounted, allowing regular file system operations to be performed

or secondary databases to be started.

This chapter provides an introduction to using Storage Checkpoints for Storage Rollback of an

Oracle database. For full information on how to administer the Storage Checkpoints feature for the

database software that you are using, see the appropriate VERITAS Storage Foundation Database

Administrator’s Guide.

Note Storage Checkpoints can only be used to restore from logical errors such as human mistakes

or software faults. You cannot use them to restore files after a disk failure because all the

data blocks are on the same physical device. Disk failure requires restoration of a database

from a backup copy of the database files kept on a separate medium. Combining data

redundancy (for example, disk mirroring) with Storage Checkpoints is recommended for

highly critical data to protect against both physical media failure and logical errors.

Storage Checkpoints require space in the file systems where they are created, and the space

required grows over time as copies of changed file system blocks are made. If a file system runs out

of space, and there is no disk space into which the file system and any underlying volume can

expand, VxFS automatically removes the oldest Storage Checkpoints if they were created with the

removable attribute.

If available, it is recommended that you use the VxDBA utility to administer Storage Checkpoints

when they are applied to database applications. See the VERITAS Storage Foundation Database

Administrator’s Guide for details.

For information on how Storage Checkpoints work, see the VERITAS File System Administrator’s

Guide.