When I was a kid I loved to watch He-Man, The Most Powerful Man in the Universe. Yes, R-Man is the most powerful database backup and recovery tool in the universe for today. But still there are some DBAs do not want use RMAN. They are the same crowd who also do not use Database or Grid Control, Automatic Storage Management(ASM), Automatic PGA Management and resist to migrate to 10g Release 2. Sometimes this resistance drives me nuts because the resistance need to create lots of myths to dirty all what they are afraid of.
For RMAN two common used alternatives are file system backup and storage vendor’s snapshot capabilities which usually cost a fortune. For me they can not be any alternatives for RMAN but in this post I won’t be questioning these methods versus RMAN like how they can do Block Level Recovery, Duplicate or Validate a backup with a simple command etc. But I will provide two examples since the resistance believed these two are myths of RMAN :)
1. Resistance cries out : “RMAN is backing up only used blocks is a myth!” and R-Man answers them ;)
RMAN does not backup empty blocks which are above the high watermark and not formated, this feature is called NULL COMPRESSION. After 10g Release 2 RMAN also does not backup empty blocks below the high watermark and this new feature is called UNUSED BLOCK COMPRESSION.
Code Listing 207a – RMAN UNUSED BLOCK COMPRESSION DEMO on Linux EE 10.2.0.3
The resistance used 10g XE for a similar demonstration and this feature does not function on XE, this was enough for them to built their own “scientific” myth. I love XE but IMHO XE is not the place to do these kinds of testing.
Code Listing 207b – RMAN UNUSED BLOCK COMPRESSION DEMO on Windows XE 10.2.0.1
Just a complementary note on Automatic Segment Space Management(ASSM) and high watermark concept; ASSM was introduced with Oracle 9i Release 2 and it is default segment management when you create a new tablespace after 10g Release 2. ASSM introduced two new high watermarks;
– High High Watermark(HHWM); all blocks above HHWM are unformatted,
– Low High Watermark(LHWM); all blocks below LHWM are formatted.
as a result now we can have unformatted blocks in the middle of a segment.
2. Resistance cries out : “During RMAN back up compared to file system based backups redo generation is NOT less!” and R-Man answers them ;)
If a tablespace is in backup mode Oracle will stop updating its file headers but will of course continue to write data to the database files. In backup mode Oracle will write out complete changed blocks to the redo log files with the first DML on that block. Where as normally only changes on a block are logged to the redo logs. This is done to enable the reconstruction of a block if only half of it was backed up, so the result is increased log activity and archiving during on-line backups.
Code Listing 207c – Redo Generation Cost of Backup Mode Demo
RMAN does not put tablespaces in backup mode, so there is no redo generation overhead like shown in above demo. RMAN will re-read database blocks until it gets a consistent image of it.
For much more of R-Man’s strengths after 10g Release 2, like incremental merge of ASM based FRA(disk) backup, faster incremental backups with Block Change Tracking and Backup Compression please check these two resources;
Faster Backup, Faster Recovery By Arup Nanda
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 New Features in Backup and Recovery
Testing Information : the scripts mentioned are tested on Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0
References Used :
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/10gdba/week9_10gdba.html
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/backup.102/b14191/osbackup004.htm#sthref1489
RMAN does (not?) backup empty blocks | what is NULL COMPRESSION ? | what is BINARY COMPRTESSION ?| what is UNUSED BLOCK COMPRESSION ? « lutz hartmann as sysdba
http://www.oraclealchemist.com/oracle/hot-backups-redo-and-fractured-blocks/
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