Using Online Backup

You can create a copy of the current state of a database without shutting down any of the database’s processes by invoking nuocmd hotcopy database.

For more information on nuocmd and other command line tools, see Command Line Tools.

Hot copy is a mechanism for copying a database’s archive and journal from one or more of a database’s running Storage Managers (SMs). The advantage of a hot copy is that it is an online procedure. Your SM(s) remain running and available during the hot copy operation so redundancy is not affected.

Hotcopy Backup Overview
Figure 1. Hotcopy Backup Overview
The target hot copy backup-set directory should not be removed or renamed during a hot copy operation. If that occurs, the SM will exit with the following error message: Unable to create archive directory: No such file or directory.

In practice, once a backup set is created by a full hot copy, it is typically used by all subsequent incremental and journal hot copies until the next full hot copy occurs. However, you may choose to continue running incremental hot copy against the previous backup set while a full hotcopy creates the new backup set (useful if the full hot copy takes a long time to run).