Back up and restore Oracle 10g database on Windows

The following procedures walks you through how to back up and restore an Oracle 10g database on a Windows Recovery Node. These procedures assume that you are knowledgeable and comfortable with Oracle databases.

Restoring and recovering an Oracle database, after booted in the recovery node (RN), is a unique process from that of other databases. These procedures cover the prerequisites for hot backups with Volume Shadow Copy, and the required tools developed by Quorum to recover and open your Oracle Database on your recovery node.

These procedures outline the steps to recover an Oracle database with ARCHIVELOG mode enabled and the Oracle VSS Writer service installed. Hot backups are not possible with an Oracle database using NOARCHIVELOG mode. Databases using NOARCHIVELOG mode must be put in a consistent (shutdown) state in order to perform a backup.

Recovery, maintenance and troubleshooting of Oracle databases on the protected node (PN) will not be covered in these procedures.

These procedures might not work with your specific configuration; as such, discuss your configuration with Quorum Support before you perform this procedure.

(Step 1) To prepare your environment:

1.	Verify that your RN is running:

•	Windows 2003 or greater

•	Oracle Database 10g or greater

2.	For the protected node on which you want to perform hot backups and for every Oracle database instance, install the Oracle VSS writer service.

The Oracle VSS writer service is installed by default with Oracle Database 11g. Oracle Database 10g releases require a manual installation of the Oracle VSS writer service. The installation instructions for the Oracle VSS writer service can be found here.

3.	Verify the Oracle VSS Writer Service has started and is set to Automatic start at boot time. By default, the Oracle VSS writer service is set to Manual startup mode.

4.	Ensure that each database instance on which you want to perform hot backups has ARCHIVELOG mode enabled.

5.	Ensure that you have your archive logs stored on a separate volume from your database (DBF) files.

Oracle requires that you put archive logs on a separate volume when performing backups with the Oracle VSS Writer service.

Quorum cannot recommend an architecture that violates Oracle's specifications. However, it should be noted that Quorum did not observe any adverse effects when putting the database and archive logs on the same volume while performing VSS backups and restores.

6.	From the onQ Portal’s Protection Config tab, verify that you have the following volumes protected.

•	The volume which contains your database files.

•	The volume which contains the archive logs.

7.	Install the Quorum Oracle database recovery scripts in the %programfiles%\Quorum\usr folder.

8.	Modify the restore_oracle.bat batch file in the %programfiles%\Quorum\usr folder:

a.	Using the line at the top of the script, define your Oracle database instances. Each instance should be separated by a single space and encapsulated by parenthesis. For example, if you have two database instances, namely orcl and testdb:

# set DB_INSTANCES=(orcl testdb)

b.	Save your changes.

(Step 2) To back up the Oracle database:

Initiate a backup of the PN, or wait for a scheduled backup to complete.

(Step 3) To recover the Oracle database:

After the RN boots, you can now begin the Oracle Database recovery process. This process can be performed with an RN booted in Test Mode or Production Mode.

1.	From a command prompt, ensure that the Oracle database service is running and that it can be accessed by the SYS as SYSDBA user via sqlplus:

# set ORACLE_SID=your_database_instance_name # sqlplus SYS as SYSDBA # exit

If you are able to successfully log on to the database console, then you may exit and start the recovery process.

2.	Verify the Oracle VSS writer service is running.

3.	Navigate to the %programfiles%\Quorum\usr folder, then run restore_oracle.bat.

You will be prompted for your database password twice for each database instance: once for a shutdown command and once for an open resetlogs command.

Your database(s) should now be open and ready to use.

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