VERITAS Database FlashSnap

VERITAS Database FlashSnap is a feature included with VERITAS Storage Foundation for Oracle Enterprise Edition. It is also a separately licensed option available with VERITAS Storage Foundation for Oracle Standard Edition.

VERITAS Database FlashSnap offers a flexible and efficient means of managing business-critical data. Database FlashSnap lets you capture an online image of an actively changing database at a given instant, called a point-in-time copy. You can perform system backup, upgrade, or perform other maintenance tasks on point-in-time copies while providing continuous availability of your critical data. If required, you can offload processing of the point-in-time copies onto another host to avoid contention for system resources on your production server.

Database FlashSnap takes advantage of the Persistent FastResync and Disk Group Content Reorganization features of VxVM. Database FlashSnap also streamlines database operations. Once configured, the database administrator can create snapshots, resynchronize data, and reverse resynchronize data without involving the system administrator.

VERITAS Storage Foundation for Oracle provides three commands that can be executed by the database administrator and do not require root privileges:

• dbed_vmchecksnap
• dbed_vmsnap
• dbed_vmclonedb

These commands let database administrators take advantage of the VxVM snapshot functionality without having to deal with storage operations in day-to-day database uses. To use Database FlashSnap, you must configure the volumes used by the database according to the guidelines in Preparing Hosts and Storage for Database FlashSnap.