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Standby Database: BRBACKUP Backup of Database FilesLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

You can use BRBACKUP to back up the data files and control files of the Standby Database.

A major advantage of the standby database is that you do not have to perform backups on the primary (that is, production) database. Instead, you can perform the backup on the standby database using BRBACKUP. This means that the database backup does not add to the load on the primary database host. Since there is no online operation on the standby database, all host resources are available for the database backup.

Prerequisites
  • The standby instance is in the recovery state and cannot be opened. You can only perform an offline backup without RMAN. But with RMAN, the database can still remain in mount standby state. For the BRBACKUP backup of the standby data, you must set the backup_type parameter to offline_standby or online_standby.

  • BRBACKUP supports renaming all database files to another SAPDATA_HOME directory using the orig_db_home parameter. If you use this parameter, you can even run the standby database on the same host as the primary database. However, we do not recommend this for high availability.

  • For connection to a remote host, you must meet the remote database connect requirements.

On UNIX systems, you can now perform BRBACKUP and BRARCHIVE backups of remote databases with the OPS$ user without entering the database user and password in the -u option. For more information, see SAP Note 914174 Information published on SAP site.

On Windows systems, this is possible in the standard Oracle configuration.

Features

The following graphic shows how backup occurs in a standby database:

  • BRBACKUP logs on to the primary database instance using the connection string from the primary_db parameter. It retrieves the information required on the database structure. This information is written to the backup logs.

  • BRBACKUP stops the standby database instance for offline standby backup.

  • BRBACKUP backs up the standby data.

  • After the backup has finished, the original state of the standby database instance is recovered. If the database was in a recovery state, this state is restored, using the Oracle commands STARTUP NOMOUNT, ALTER DATABASE MOUNT STANDBY DATABASE.