Re: Database and RAID

David Kosenko wrote: > > Matt Reprogle <mcreprog@ictest.delcoelect.com> offerred: [SNIPPED] > Version 7.3 of IDS allows the use of external backup mechanisms. While the server > can be technically "on-line" during such a backup, in fact all update activity is > blocked. Effectively, you have a read-only system while the backup occurs. The > theory is that some of these external backup mechanisms can be quite fast, so the > read-only period is short enough to be tolerable. This was intended for use as a VERY fast method. Namely in combination with 7.30's support for multiple mirrors. You can have two mirrors defined for each chunk, take the engine to external backup mode, disable one set up mirrors, put the engine back online, backup the disabled mirrors offline, reenable the secondary mirror. Alternatively, you can just leave the additional mirrors offline and use them as the backup directly then disable the other mirror to use as backup and bring the original backup mirrors back online to be caught up. This is great for EXTREMELY large databases as an "archive" only takes about 2 minutes, the time needed to disable one of the mirrors and reenable the other, and if it can be scheduled at a time when there will be no updates there will be no effect on production. Just FYI Art S. Kagel