[ILUG] advise for restores (Oracle DB & System)

[Conor Wynne]

Hi all,

I have an issue whereby a system (LUN(s)) is longer trustworthy. Random
hangs, things like that. 

Its running RHEL (ES3) kernel 2.4.21.15EL (latest certified by oracle)
and naturally they do not have a valid working backup, sweet. 

One line of thought is do boot off a rescue CD & to dd the two luns to a
tape drive. Then to plug the tape unit onto the second server & restore
the luns accordingly. 

But the issue is that there have been so many lockups & restriping of
the arrays, that they cannot be trusted. 

I have created identical luns on the other node, and performed a full
install (to be sure we dont miss any packages, things can be removed as
and when required) of ES3 with the same updates. 

A tar backup has been made and I have restored /var /u01 /etc /usr /home
to /root. This is the way I wish to proceed, the other node is backup
(unstable as it is) so at least they have some sort of production until
we sort out the backup server. 

What is the best option, dd or tar? 
Will dd copy any dodgy blocks? 

dd certainly is easier, but I just don't trust it. 
As far as DB changes go, we can down the db and then rsync to the other
server before bringing it online. 

The old server is using ext2 for /u02, I went for ext3 on the backup
node. Would rawdevices be better in this case? I dont think we need ocfs
as this is not a cluster. Any recomendations on that front?

regards

-- 
Conor Wynne
Dublin
Irlande
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