Even if mirrored storage means one copy of the database can be taken offline for backup, it is still important to put it back online as quickly as possible to minimise the number of transactions that must be replicated in order to bring that copy up to date.
Backing up a two-terabyte database in two and a half hours is no mean feat, but it can be done and this was proved recently by a performance test carried out by a group of companies active in the enterprise storage market.
A two-terabyte Oracle 9i database housed on six terabytes of StorageTek D-series disks connected to a Sun Fire 6800 server via Brocade Silkworm SAN switches and Emulex LP9002L Fibre Channel host bus adaptors was backed up in under an hour to two StorageTek L700E tape libraries with 24 tape drives using Veritas NetBackup DataCenter 4.5 backup software.
To put the feat into perspective, Computer Associates previously claimed its BrightStor Enterprise Backup was "the fastest backup solution in the industry" with benchmarked performance of over 1.56 terabytes per hour.
Restoring files quickly is also important. "Improving backup and restore times at a significant level, based on real-world database configurations, will be of great advantage to companies who view maximum uptime as an essential business requirement," said Steve Kenniston, senior analyst with Enterprise Storage Group.
No figures were announced concerning the time needed to restore the Oracle database.
