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Procedure documentation Developing Good Practice for Database Backup (ON-Bar)  Locate the document in its SAP Library structure

Use

This section discusses guidelines for creating Informix database backups with ON-Bar .

Procedure

  1. Perform database backup with the Informix database server in online mode.

    2. You can create database backups while the Informix database server is fully online and no extra risk is involved. Data consistency is maintained, which means that you can restore the database correctly (to the point the database backup was started).

    You can put the database server into quiescent mode for a backup, but this is normally unnecessary. You cannot perform database backups in offline mode. For more information about Informix database server modes, see Server Mode with SAPDBA and the Informix documentation.

  2. Perform a logical-log backup after a storage-space backup.

    3. Storage-space backups run in parallel. This means that a logical-log backup is necessary immediately afterwards to make sure of data consistency in the event of a restore. Therefore, always follow a storage-space backup with a logical-log backup.

    Whole-system backups are always executed serially. Therefore, data consistency in the event of a restore is guaranteed. So you do not have to do a separate logical-log backup because the logical logs are included in the backup.

  3. Perform database backup during off-peak hours.

    4. A database backup, particularly one that uses software compression, might affect the performance of the Informix database server. Since performance of your database is critical, you should perform backups during off-peak hours.

  4. Perform a whole-system backup at level-0 when necessary

Sometimes you need to perform a whole-system backup at level-0. For example, you have to perform a whole-system backup at level-0 after changing the configuration of the physical and logical logs. Whole-system backups are also required for the following:

For more information about database administration activities requiring a whole-system backup at level-0, see the Informix documentation.

Result

The database is backed up using best practice, so avoiding impact on the production system as far as possible. This is an essential part of your database backup approach. Therefore, you can be more sure that, in the event of failure involving data loss, you have a suitable backup that you can use to quickly restore the database with minimal data loss.