BackupExec 11d Advanced Disk Backup: Does it access the live data at all?

[Dennis_Lichtent]

Hey everyone!
We recently purchased the Advanced Disk Backup option for BackupExec 11d Rev 6235. We use it to backup our Oracle databases when they're offline. As far as I understand it (and the logs tell me), if I don't let the backup job verify data and if I check the "Abort job if offhost backup is not supported" (or something similar, I'm translating this from the German version), the backup shouldn't touch the live data at all, should it?
I've faced the following problem twice now: After shutting down the database, I started the backup, saw a snapshot being created and the backup ran. I then started up the databases again and performed some maintenance on them. After a while I became aware that the Backup Exec Agent had accessed the files on the live volume with the running Oracle instance, thus throwing Oracle off track and necessitating a database restore.

Has any of you seen this before? Can you give me a hint as to what isn't working as I understand it?

Thanks in advance.
Regards

Dennis

[Hemant_Jain]

For backing up Oracle database, you should be using Oracle agent to select database in stead of doing a file backup. So, Oracle Database folder needs to be excluded from backup and backup must be selected through Oracle Agent. Offhost backup would just help you improving the performance by taking load away from Application server. The basic idea is that avoid doing a file level backup, after taking database offline. As, once you get Oracle Agent, taking databases offline would not be necessary. You can do an online backup using Oracle Agent, and this kind of situation would not occur. Moreover, if you run a backup with Oracle data files selected and also use ADBO, we would backup the files as ordinary files, without understanding if it is an Oracle Database or not. So, you should use Oracle Agent.

[Dennis_Lichtent]

Thanks for this pointer. We've used the Oracle agent in the past but switched to RMAN for our online backups due to various reasons.
Before a major application update we take the databases down though and perform a file level backup for quicker recovery. When we do that with ADBO though, it seems to access (and lock) files outside the snapshot it's created, wreaking havoc in the database.

[Hemant_Jain · Accepted solution]

Please avoid using ADBO for Oracle database files backup. Exclude the folder from backup. Go for Oracle Agent or continue to use RMAN as per your design.

Please mark this as solution, if this response answers your question.

Thanks

[Dennis_Lichtent]

Thanks. This doesn't really answer my initial question of whether ADBO touches live data but I'll try to get some information elsewhere.