When Oracle released Application Server 10g, if provided a backup tool that has gotten little press.  In the Oracle Press book, Oracle Application Server 10g Administration Handbook I only mentioned the tool but did not discuss how to use it.  That was because I was working on the AS10g Beta and didn't have it to test.  Well now it is out and I'm a convert!  You can even reinstall an infrastructure on another server and restore your backup over it to recreate a failed infrastructure. COOL!

The Backup and Recovery Tool is actually a Perl script that backs up all of the configuration files for a tier.  If the tier is an infrastructure tier and contains a metadata repository database, it will back that up also. 

Configuration files are static and you can perform a hot backup of any tier while it is running.  The only time they change is when you change the configuration (deploy an app, change a container, etc).  For this reason, you only need to take a new backup when you make changes, although most all my clients take night backups.  The problem is the database.  If you do not have the skills to script a hot backup, you must shutdown the database, which requires that you so shut down the application server. 

Enter the Backup and Recovery Tool.

The tool is located on the AS10g REPCA and Utilities disk. Look in the utilities directory under backup.  Copy the tar file into a directory in the instance ORACLE_HOME.  In Unix untar the file or unzip it in Windows.

I placed mine in the ORACLE_HOME/backup_restore directory.  The first step is to update the configuration file. Change to the config directory and edit the config.inp file.  Use a text editor such as TextPad in windows to insure that extra CR's are not placed at the end of each line.  All you need to change is:

1.  The ORACLE_HOME for that instance.
2.  The directory to write out the script's log file.
3.  The directory to back the configuration file to.
If you are backing up the Infrastructure:
4.  The directory to backup the database to.

Make sure you instance environment is set and run the configuration script.

$ bkp_restore.pl -m configure

You may have to fully qualify the Perl interpreter as below.

c:\oracle\infra904\perl\5.6.1\bin\
MSWin32-x86\perl.exe bkp_restore.pl -m       configure

This script examines your instance and adds parameters to the config.inp.

Now backup the instance configuration:

$ bkp_restore.pl -v -m backup_config

The -v provides a verbose listing of the files as they backup.  All of the configuration files will be backed up to the location you defined.  If any errors are encountered, they will be logged in the log directory you defined in the config.inp.

Now backup the database.

$ bkp_restore.pl -v -m backup_online

The script will use RMAN to create a hot backup of the metadata repository.  If you don't know RMAN there are a number of good books that explain it.  If you need to restore the database, you can use the tool or startup RMAN and manually restore. 

Planning Considerations

1.  Each backup creates a file with the date in the file name.  You can restore to a specific date by specifying a file to restore from.

2.  If you run the tool daily then you will need to add to your log purge script a command to purge old backups.

3.  The database is backed up using RMAN.  You need to learn RMAN to insure that you can recover the database and maintain your backups.  RMAN can determine which logs and backups are no longer needed, etc but YOU have to manage it.  The tool also supports incremental database backups.

4.  The tool must be configure and run for each instance on a server.

5.  If your metadata repository is installed in a back-end database, you cannot use the Backup and Recovery Tool to back up the database.  You can still use the tool to back up the configuration files for the infrastructure and you can separately use RMAN (or a script) to backup the database.

This just scratches the surface of the tool's capabilities.  You can modify the script to include you application created files in the backup, etc.  Read the documentation before trying to implement the Backup and Recovery Tool.

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