(my response below ...)

Ed Wilts wrote:
> On 11/19/2006 7:52 AM, Krzys wrote:
>   
>> Hello everyone, I have a question, I am new to netbackup still and I am 
>> doing 
>> some progress. I did install on my linux boxes clients and now I am 
>> sucessfuly 
>> backing them up, now the next step that I want to try is to backup oracle. I 
>> know that there are different ways of doing oracle backup but I was told by 
>> my 
>> DBa that previous admin was given stop and start scripts and he took care of 
>> the 
>> rest, but I have no idea how to use those stop and start scripts with 
>> netbackup 
>> to bring oracle down and then start after backup is completed. Anyone has 
>> any 
>> hints? WHen I looked up on the server side in policy settings I did see 
>> options 
>> for oracle rman backups but my DBa says that we dont use rman to back up any 
>> databases... Where could I get more info? any one has any suggestions...
>>     
>
> Having NetBackup automatically stop and start Oracle is extremely 
> error-prone.  There will be times when the database will not start up 
> due to a variety of errors that can occur at various times of the backups.
>
> We don't use agents and I got called an hour ago by a DBA and we don't 
> even have stop/start scripts called by NetBackup!  He still thought it 
> was our fault that the database was down.
>
> Use an Oracle agent.  Seriously.

There are really two parts here.

AfaIk, without archive redologs, you must shutdown the DB in order to 
back it up, with or without the NetBackup for Oracle DB Agent. Your 
Oracle DBA should be able to tell you more for your particular 
installation.  This could be done in a client backup job start script 
(and then  the DB is restarted in a client backup job end script), but 
may fail at various points ... so you may find, as Ed has, that this is 
more bother/risky than the cost of having archive redologs.

Once you have archive redologs, you may backup your DB while it is 
online using Oracle RMAN.  If you don't have the NetBackup for Oracle DB 
Agent, your backup will go to disk, with NetBackup not backing up the 
DB, but rather the RMAN backup files. This could be done via cron/batch, 
or as a NetBackup client job start script.  

If you have the agent, then life gets really easy ... NetBackup invokes 
a script that you and/or your DBA write ... and that script invokes RMAN 
to backup directly to your NetBackup server.

The advantage of having the agent is that it is possible to determine 
that you actually can do a successful restore ... you can have RMAN 
"crosscheck" the backups it thinks it has (in the RMAN recovery catalog 
or DB control files) and that Netbackup has in its catalog.  In my 
experience, when RMAN starts a restore, it works.  If you are simply 
backing up DB files from a shutdown DB, you should be OK, but there is 
no guarantee you backed up or restored everything that is necessary for 
success. 

Hope this helps!   cheers, wayne