I know storage vendors are doing some interesting things at the storage layer (i.e. EMC Timefinder/Snap). Timefinder creates replicas of live, running databases, so maybe someone is thinking about new capabilities at the storage layer? Reference: http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/white-papers/h5635-timefinder-snap-multiple-snapshots-wp.pdf Chris On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 5:56 AM, Howard Latham <howard.latham@xxxxxxxxx>wrote: > Ive just been told there's a tool that will do a 'cold backup' of a live > database by taking a snapshot of the db at a particular time. > The only way I have heard of achieving this is by having mirroring then > temporarily Breaking the mirror and backing up the mirror . Any good > opinions or Ideas on this would be welcome. > > > -- > Howard A. Latham > > >