I have a question for you. I have spent big effort to install Oracle 11gR2 RAC Grid Infrastructure(GI) software on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 which is OEL–Oracle version of Red Hat.
I have to install Oracle 11g database after this install, I dont want to loss it or any accident happens to my GI and OEL installation.
I checked on the Internet and saw so many backup for Linux, but I would like to you opioning as you are a very experienced Linux admin.
Please give some clue or command so I can backup my server and restore it when it needed.
have you considered to simply use DD command? It is quite simple to use a very effective. Here is an example. Let’s say that you boot your some live linux distro on the box where you have Oracle 11gR2 RAC Grid Infrastructure(GI) software on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.5 server installation.
boot some linux live distro
mount your backup storage ( USB / NFS etc. )
check the block device name of your hard disk with Oracle server installation ( fdisk -l ) ex. /dev/sda etc.
do dd backup. Suppose your your installation is on disk /dev/sda and your backup storage is on /mnt/my_nfs than you do:
NOTE: the above will work for any filesystem and operations as dd will provide you with low-level raw data copy. Also you can do only a single partition and not entire disk by taking a backup using partition name with your dd command such us /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 etc. NOTE: You do not have to compress the final backup file as it is only advisable. Here is a dd command without compression: