Veritas Quick I/O Feature (SAP Library - SAP Database Guide: Oracle (BC-DB-ORA-DBA))

Veritas Quick I/O Feature

Use

BRBACKUP and BRRESTORE now support the Veritas Quick I/O feature.

Note

Up to now BRBACKUP and BRRESTORE considered the Veritas Quick I/O files to be raw disks. They were saved with dd command (if no BACKINT was used) with block size equal to Oracle block size. This could cause performance disadvantages. In addition, the files had to be created manually before BRRESTORE was started.

Features

The Veritas Quick I/O files are automatically recognized by BRBACKUP and marked in the detail log (see QIO flag in messages BR118I, BR119I and BR120I). This is the basis for processing these files through BRRESTORE.

In native BRBACKUP backups (that is, without BACKINT), the files are copied to local and remote tape units using dd, to local disks using cp or dd or using rcp or sapftp onto remote disks, using backup_dev_type = stage. Unlike the raw disks, the block size for the dd command can be set to any value using parameters dd_flags and dd_in_flags.

In BRBACKUP with BACKINT, the "cdev" names are transferred to BACKINT with complete path, as in the following example.

Example

/oracle/DCA/sapdata13/ddici_1/.ddici.data1::cdev:vxfs:

Quick I/O files can be created with relative links, as in the following example:

Example

/oracle/DCA/sapdata13/ddici_1/ddici.data1 -> .ddici.data1::cdev:vxfs:

We recommend you to usually adhere to the SAP standard naming convention for normal files, as in the examples above.

BRRESTORE creates the Quick I/O files automatically before data is actually restored. Therefore, you can use any BACKINT program (not only NetBackup by Veritas) for the database backup.