Command Options for BRBACKUP

This section describes the command options for BRBACKUP. If you start BRBACKUP without command options, the values in the Initialization Profile init.sap are used. Unless otherwise specified in the initialization profile init.sap, BRBACKUP starts an offline complete backup to a local tape device, with a storage capacity of 1200 MB and no file compression.

For more information about features common to both tools, see Common Features of BRBACKUP and BRARCHIVE.

If you use BRBACKUP with command options, these override the corresponding values in the initialization profile. To use the options, you can specify either the letter indicated or the complete word.

brbackup
[-a|-archive []]
[-b|-backup |last
[-bd|-backup_delete |last]
[-c|-confirm [force]]
[-d|-device tape|disk|pipe|disk_copy|disk_standby|tape_auto|
pipe_auto|tape_box|pipe_box|util_file|util_file_online|
stage|stage_copy|stage_standby|rman_prep|rman_util|rman_disk|
rman_stage]
[-db|-delete_backup |last]
[-e|-execute ]
[-f|-fillup [,..]||last]
[-h|-help [version]]
[-i|-initialize [force|show]]
[-k|-compress no|yes|hardware|only]
[-l|-language E|D]
[-m|-mode all|all_data|full|incr||
|-||

-a|-archive

-b|-backup

-c|-confirm

-d|-device

-e|-execute

-f|-fillup

-h|-help

-i|-initialize

-k|-compress

-l|-language

m|-mode

-n|-number

-o|-output

-p|-profile

-q|-query

-r|-parfile

-t|-type

-u|-user

-v|-volume

-w|-verify

-V|-VERSION

Supporting the Raw Device Configuration with BRBACKUP and BRRESTORE

The BRARCHIVE utility remains unchanged in a raw device configuration because offline redo log files must always reside in a file system.

There are some changes in the BRBACKUP and BRRESTORE programs in a raw device configuration, but these changes have no effect on the function scope of the programs. The known functionality of BRBACKUP and BRRESTORE for backing up and restoring file systems remains unchanged.

Use the dd command to access raw devices.

• With
dd, you can write directly from/to the raw device to/from tape (backup/restore to/from tape)

• With
dd, you can copy directly from/to the raw device to/from disk with file system (backup/restore to/from disk)

• In case of a backup with software compression, output of the command
dd is sent directly to the compress. In case of a restore with decompression, output of uncompress is sent to dd.

• In case of a backup on a remote computer, output of
dd is sent for example directly to remsh (/rsh etc.). In case of a restore from a remote computer, it is sent from remsh (/rsh etc.) to the dd command.

• There are new
init.sap parameters for defining the options for the dd command: see dd_flags and dd_in_flags.

Since the dd command does not support a dd continuation tape (in this case an I/O error is reported), a method which is similar to the cpio continuation method is not supported. This means that each individual database file residing on the raw devices must completely fit onto one tape. This restriction does not refer to the BRBACKUP continuation tape management, which means that the BRBACKUP utility can request continuation tapes if they should be necessary for backup of the next database files.

Special Features of BRBACKUP

The parameter parallel_instances must be set in the init.sap profile used by BRBACKUP in order that BRBACKUP be able to access all the ORACLE instances.

The backup of a database with the Parallel Server configuration using the SAP utility BRBACKUP runs as follows:

1. All ORACLE instances which are stopped are restarted in parallel by BRBACKUP with the appropriate SQLDBA commands.
2. BRBACKUP logs on to the local (DDB) instance and carries out the common actions in the database (determination of the database structure, the volumes used...).
3. If an offline backup is to be carried out, all instances are stopped. In all other cases, they continue running during the backup.
4. The required backup is started.
5. If an offline backup was carried out, all database instances are restarted in parallel at the end of the backup.
6. BRBACKUP updates the tables SDBAH and SDBAD.
7. The status of all instances before the start of the backup with BRBACKUP is recovered. That is, the instances which were stopped before the backup are now stopped again.

During the entire backup, BRCONNECT monitors all database instances and checks them constantly to see that the required status of the instances stays unchanged. If the status of an instance changes during the backup, BRCONNECT interrupts the entire backup.

In the BRBACKUP log, both before and after the actual backup, a log is made of the parameters relevant to the online redo log files that are being archived for all database instances in question (output of the ARCHIVE LOG LIST command).

If you run an offline backup of the entire database, a file of all online redo log groups for the ORACLE instances is saved in each case.

The functionality of BRBACKUP is available (in particular, the support of software and hardware compression) with one exception concerning the dd command: when using the dd command, there is no continuation mechanism.