Standby Database: BRBACKUP Backup of Database Files (SAP Library - SAP Database Guide: Oracle (BC-DB-ORA-DBA))

Standby Database: BRBACKUP Backup of Database Files

Use

You can use BRBACKUP to back up the data files and control files of the Oracle 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 is not opened. You can only perform an offline backup. For the BRBACKUP backup of the standby data, you must set the backup_type parameter to offline_standby.

Renaming of database files in the standby database is not supported by BRBACKUP. You must keep the original names of the primary database.

From SAP Release 4.5, we support renaming all database files to another SAPDATA_HOME directory of BRBACKUP 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.

Features

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

This graphic is explained in the accompanying text

BRBACKUP logs on to the primary database instance using the instance 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.

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 Oracle commands STARTUP NOMOUNT, ALTER DATABASE MOUNT STANDBY DATABASE.

See also:

Structure-Retaining Database Copy