Backup & Recovery in Oracle Apps Database

Based on lots of request from readers of this blog I am posting on Backup & Recovery of Oracle Apps 11i database & application tier.

I’ll discuss on How to troubleshoot load balancer in oracle Apps after Backup & Recover.

You might have read in Oracle Documentation lot of time to backup your system before applying patch or before database Upgrade or changing any file or table. Today you will see how to take backup of table, file, database or applications (I am covering only basic things on backup)

How to backup a file/directory ?
This is most common & very basic thing in taking backup, backup is snapshot of any file at a particular time . In order to take backup of file/directory so that it can be recovered at later stage (In case of any issues)
cp filename filename.bak
If you want to backup directory you can use
cp -R dir dir.bak
If directory is quite big lets assume APPL_TOP which is around 11GB you can tar (zip) utility in linux.
tar -cvf dir.tar dir ( Where -c is compress , v is verbose, f is file )
to restore backed up directory use -x extract option like
tar -xvf dir.tar

How to backup a table ?
If you are a DBA you will find this bit silly but you can use create table as assume you want to backup table FND_USERS to table FND_USERS_BAK , you can use
SQL> create table FND_USERS_BAK as select * from FND_USERS;
Though you can use imp/exp feature of database as well to backup a atble.

What are two main backup categories for Database ?
Broadly you have Cold Backup & Hot backup option with database.

Cold backup : is database backup which you take when database is down
Hotbackup : is database backup during which database is available to user . For Hotbackup database should be in archive log mode. Tablespaces should be in begin backup mode while copying data files.

Advantages of Cold backup :
Easy to implement, No need to convert database in to archive.
Disadvantage of Cold Backup :
Services are not available during backup, not acceptable in production

Advantages of Hot backup :
Users can access database & application during backup
Disadvantages of Hot Backup :
Difficult to implement initially, extra space for archive logs

For Cold Backup of Database & Applications :
–Shut down application tier services using adstpall.sh
–Shutdown database listener & database
–Copy file system (middle Tier & Database tier including software & datafiles to tape or harddisk ). You can zip or tar as well to reduce size of backup as mentioned above via tar -cvf
–Once backup is over start database & db listener
–Start Application Tier

For Hot backup of Database & Applications :
–Make sure database is in Archive log mode ( How to check & how to convert coming tomorrow)
–Put tablespaces in to begin backup Mode
–Create backup control file
— Copy datafiles , log file, control files
–Put tablespaces into end backup Mode
— Copy oracle software & middle tier software as mentioned in cold backup mode
Backup done

How to put tablespaces into begin or end backup mode
Wait for tomorrow’s post …

If you want to check Oracle Apps DBA Interview Questions check at

http://teachmeoracle.com/interview.html ( Around 15 pages & 90 questions)

*Those who posted interview questions to me, wait for some time as I am very busy right into project. I’ll try to respond you before end of this week .

http://teachMeOracle.com/forum

About the Author Masroof Ahmad

Leave a Comment:

14 comments
Herod T says September 13, 2006

use RMAN instead of hot backups.

Much simplier and less complicated and easier to restore with more features.

Reply
Atul Kumar says September 13, 2006

Hi Herod,
Thanks a lot for your valuable suggestion. Would you like to share RMAN setup with Other Budding Apps DBA’s ?

If you can spare some time , I can give Team Member rights & you can update configuring RMAN .

Regards
Atul Kumar
atul_iiit@yahoo.com

Reply
Irfan says September 14, 2006

RMAN may help with small and Middle size databases. I cast my vote for BCV. Good, reliable, fast and used by many.

Though hot cloning using BCV is a trick on the applications side.

Regards,
Irfan Momin

Reply
Atul Kumar says September 14, 2006

Hi Irfan,
Thanks a lot for sharing your views on Backup.
By BCV you mean Business Continuity Volumens ? As lot of guys going in favour of RMAN , I will update on RMAN or if some one want to update on this post about RMAN mail me at atul_iiit@yahoo.com and I ‘ll give access to you on this site .

Atul

Reply
Prakash says April 24, 2007

Hi;

Would like to know what need to do in order to do BCV backup of RAC (2-node) database on Solaris.

Thanks,

Prakash Patel
phpatel1@yahoo.com

Reply
Prakash says April 24, 2007

Hi;

Woild like to know what need to take care on implementation of BCV backup of RAC (2-node) database on Solaris server.

Thanks,

Prakash Patel

Reply
Anonymous says August 1, 2007

hi,
I’m new to oracle, what is redo logs and why there are 3 controlfiles in database? I mean is it possible to create more than 3 ctlfiles? Thanks

Reply
Shahrukh says September 27, 2007

hi Atul

I am working on R12 on DUAL nodes and upgrade to 12.0.2, i need to configure RMAN, but i need the proper scripts which can be ideal for Production environment, and secondly please let me know that how can we use RMAN backups with SAN as Storage?

Thanks
Shahrukh Yasin

Reply
dba apps says September 18, 2008

When is that Tommorrow going to come … Your last post is of 2006 do you mean another 2 decades as 2 years has already passed

Reply
Atul says September 18, 2008

Ha ha ha very funny comment,

Check in this site, we posted lot of posts on db hotbackup as well as apps backup.

Reply
Enio says December 17, 2008

Hi Atul,

how can i do a backup without stop soa suite (application)?

thanks.

Enio

Reply
Atul Kumar says December 17, 2008

Enio,
This is called as hotbackup, take apps tier (soa suite) backup as normal file system up while system is up. For SOA DB put database (tablespaces) in backup mode and take datafile backup including codeset

Reply
Enio says December 18, 2008

Thanks Atul..

Reply
Ibrahim says July 28, 2009

how to schedule a backup plan of apps
kindly suggest

Reply
Add Your Reply