re-establish a clone and re-sync it? RM AIX ORACLE

Question

We are new to EMC storage and software and just getting a handle on using Replication Manager.
We are using Rep Mgr 5.2, our source & target host(s) are unix AIX 5.3 ibm machine, our main focus is snapping & cloning our Oracle 10.2.0.2 databases.

I've successfully cloned one database and mounted it to target host. The database has not been opened. I performed the clone yesterday afternoon and today I want to re-sync that clone. Is that possible?

I find it terribly difficult to find answers for stuff like this within powerlink and documentation. I've viewed the RM Product Guide and find no mention of Re-Sync.

Ben Alvey

JamesBEMC · Accepted Answer

Yes indeed.If the same (target) clone is used, it will only be an incremental update (track copy), which will of course be much faster.James.

BenA4 · Answer

James,That's great news, it took 4 hours to create the clone yesterday. Also, is there a document anywhere to I can view to give me a good general idea of how other customers use RM with Oracle? The purpose of this clone is going to be to offload a hotbackup that we currently run every night on our production database. We're also wanting to create a snap shot every 4 hours that we could mount to a different host to combat user error. It would be nice to know what others are doing to take full advantage of RM with Oracle. Thanks,Ben

JamesBEMC · Answer

Hello BenYes indeed, so the terminology for sync'ing / re-syncing is called a job.Appset = what you want to replicate/clone (say oracle)Job = how you want to replicate/clone (eg snaps, clones, SRDF, etc)So, when you re-run the same job you previously created, the existing clone will be unmounted from the mount (target) host and the same clone device (unless you have added additional clone devices) will be used to re-sync.Hope this helpsJames.

BenA4 · Answer

Hi James,Thanks for the reply. So when I execute this same job again, it's going to automatically know what blocks have changed and only sync those blocks?This particular job is cloning an Oracle database with consistency method of online using hot backup mode. Thanks,Ben

BenA4 · Answer

One more question.

I just simulated the same clone job again and when it got to the part where it mounts the vg/luns back to the target host, it failed on the mount due to those mount points already being mounted. Do I need to manually ( or within a pre-script ) unmount that volume group. I would have thought the sync would fail because it couldn't modify luns that were mounted to a host.

AranH1 · Answer

If you run a simultation of an existing job (clone in your case) that is already mounted to the host, then I think that is the expected behaviour. The job has already been run once and the devices are currently mounted to your mount host, so that part of the simulation would fail. I have had this same thing happen to me when troubleshooting an existing job that was mounted to a host already.

There are some good white papers on the use of RM, one at least concerning Oracle. Go to:

Support > Technical Documentation and Advisories > Software ~ P-R ~ Documentation > Replication Manager > White Papers

You should see the Oracle and RM white paper there.

Replication Manager

re-establish a clone and re-sync it? RM AIX ORACLE

Was this post helpful?