Hi We had a lengthy discussion about this at a previous site where the person in charge of wheeling this in refused to see our point or contact the vendor. Our backup strategy revolved around BCV splits that we, the DBA team, did not approve of. Above mentioned person knew better and refused to listen to all our concerns and advise. We had to get the vendor to send him some documents to point out to him that if you planned to use BCV for backup you'd have to put the tablespaces in backup mode. BCV's are restartable images, I believe is what they call these BCV splits. (been a while) Jack ________________________________ Van: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] Namens Matthew Zito Verzonden: vrijdag 21 juli 2006 1:58 Aan: rshamsud@xxxxxxxxxxxx; adar666@xxxxxxxxxxxx CC: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Onderwerp: RE: Oracle replication with EMC2 All a consistent split does, on the symmetrix, is freeze IOs to the volumes while the split is in progress. This is because a BCV relationship is like this: Lun 1 - M1-M2--M3 Lun 2 - M1-M2--M3 Lun 3 - M1-M2--M3 Where each M is a physical disk. When you split them, its like a zipper pulling down: Lun 1 - M1-M2- -M3 (split completed) Lun 2 - M1-M2- -M3 (split in progress) Lun 3 - M1-M2--M3 (not split yet) So, if you're striping with, say, a volume manager across those three luns, you could have a situation where you do a long write that covers all three luns, and since the split was in progress, one of the BCV disks got the write and the others didn't, resulting in inconsistent data. The consistent split freezes the IOs, so that its impossible for a write to go to a disk that hasn't split yet. However, to the database, this still looks like a shutdown abort, or a server crash. EMC still recommends doing the begin backup before you do this. Thanks, Matt -- Matthew Zito Chief Scientist GridApp Systems P: 646-452-4090 mzito@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gridapp.com -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx on behalf of Riyaj Shamsudeen Sent: Thu 7/20/2006 2:55 PM To: adar666@xxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Oracle replication with EMC2 >>When they do the bcv mirror split, they don't inform Oracle (put tablespaces in hot backup mode), so it seems these files will not be >> consistent for what Oracle expects. It is possible to have consistent backup without altering the tablespaces in to backup mode, using a special type of split known as consistent BCV splits. This method is supported by EMC for Oracle database backups and mentioned in various documents. You need powerpath or ECA for the consistent split to work. I/O to that device is frozen while the split is underway. Even then, I would be inclined to alter the tablespaces to backup mode and then split. Thanks Riayj Yechiel Adar wrote: >> <.. snipped...> >> When they do the bcv mirror split, they don't inform Oracle (put >> tablespaces in hot backup mode), so it seems these files will not be >> consistent for what Oracle expects. >> <.. snipped ..> >> > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > > Aan dit bericht en eventuele bijlagen kunnen geen rechten worden ontleend. Het Provinciaal Bestuur van Noord-Holland.