Best pratices for RMAN backup management for many databases

Question

Dear all,
We have many 10g databases (>40) hosted on multiple Windows servers which are backup up using RMAN.
A year ago, all backup's were implemented through Windows Scheduled Tasks using some batch files.
We have been busy (re)implementing / migrating such backup in Grid Control.
I personally prefer to maintain the backup management in Grid Control, but a colleague wants now to go back to the batch files.
What i am looking for here, are advices in the management of RMAN backup for multiple databases: do you guys use Grid Control or any third-party backup management tool or even got your home-made solution?
One of the discussion topic is the work involved in case that the central backup location changes.
Well... any real-life advices on best practices / strategies for RMAN backup management for many databases will be appreciated!
Thanks,
Thierry

Answer 1

Hi Thierry,
Thierry H. wrote:
Thanks for your reaction.
So, i understand that Grid Control is for you not used to manage the backups, and as a consequence, you also have no 'direct' overview of the job schedules.
One of my concern is also to avoid that too many backups are started at the same time to avoid network / storage overload. Such overview is availble in Grid Control's Jobs screen.
And, based on your strategy, do you recreate a 'one-time' Oracle scheduled job for every backup, or do your scripts create an Oracle job with multiple schedule?
You're very welcome!
Well, Grid Control is not an option for us, since each customer is in a separate infrastructure, and with their own licensing. I have no real way (in difference to your situation) to have a centralized point of control, but that on the other hand mean that I don't have to consider network/storage congestion, like you have to.
The script is run from a "permanent" job within the dba-scheduler, created like this:
dbms_scheduler.create_job(
        job_name        => 'BACKUP',
        job_type        => 'EXECUTABLE',
        job_action      => '/home/oracle/scripts/rman_backup.sh',
        start_date      => trunc(sysdate)+1+7/48,
        repeat_interval => 'trunc(sysdate)+1+7/48',
        enabled         => true,
        auto_drop       => false,
        comments        => 'execute backup script at 03:30');and then the "master-script", determines which level to use, based on weekday from the OS. The actual job schedule (start date, run interval etc) is set together with the customer IT/IS dept, to avoid congestion on the backup resources.
I have no overview of the backup status, run times etc, but have made monitoring scripts that will alert me if/when a backup either fails, or runs for too long. This, in addition with scheduled disaster/recovery tests makes me sleep rather well at night.. ;-)
I realize that there (might be) better ways of doing backup scheduling in your environment, since my requirements are so completely different than yours, but I guess that we all face the same challenges in unifying the environments as much as possible, to minimize the amount of actual work we have to do. :-)
Good luck!
//Johan