Apparently we are going to be moving a large set of resources to the
mainframe, and will be moving the data to Oracle 10g (note..64 bit).

The last time I ran Oracle on the mainframe was Oracle 6, under VM/ESA
1.0 and also, for a brief time, under VSE/SP 4.1 (sure didn't run well
there).

Anyway, there are some rather large data requirments.  But one of them
is 128GB.  I don't know what 128 GB means in this case.  Raw data.
The dasd used by the current database platform.  The amount of dasd on
that server...just what, I don't know.

In either case, I expect at least 100 GB of mainframe dasd to be used
for this.

On the little info I have, I'm expecting a total of 400 GB to be
moved to us.  400 GB ends up being a lot more, when we factor in test
systems, number of Linux images necessary (8X5 servers, weekend servers,
24X?? servers) as well as the dasd requirements for flashcopy.

And the question of the day becomes, does z/Linux (Suse 8.0 or better)
and Oracle 10g, support flashcopy of an active, running database.  I
know I can quiese things and do a flash, but on an active Oracle system,
how does Oracle sync the logs to the flash point?  Will z/Linux flush
out the write cache buffers in prep for the flash?

There is a new feature, Flashcopy, copy only, which apparently only
copies data that was to be changed, so most of your backup will be done
to the origional copy and "copy only" will retain the "before"
image of any data that was changed.  This would reduce the dasd
requirement greatly (from needing 100% for the flash to a few percent).

I've only had to deal with a few GB databases (DB2, Oracle, IMS,
etc).  Where I figure I will have between 7 and 12 databases, the big
one, 128 GB has me concerned.  Just how do you back that time of thing
up?

None of our data is currently, true 24X7.  And I don't see any great
requirement in that area.  Worst case, is everyone could accept a few
minutes for a "flash" to be done.  Best case, is the users go home
and leave us to do the job <G>.

So what kind of hardware do you backup large databases to?
How often?
How frequently do you need to shutdown z/Linux or Oracle and for what
reasons?

Right now, I'm trying to spec out what hardware we need.  But I need
to know how this all operates in production to determine what hardware
and how much is necessary.

Thanks

Tom Duerbusch
THD Consulting

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