Oracle VSS Writer vs. RMAN

oracle-11grmanvss

I am unable to find any literature to evaluate which solution to use when backing up my Oracle 11g DB. The attempt is to perform online backups by enabling ARCHIVELOG mode.

Edit: I have gone through individual documentation for RMAN and VSS Writer. I am looking for comparative analysis.

Best Answer

Oracle has some documentation on the topic: Performing Database Backup and Recovery with VSS.

Both VSS and RMAN looks good to me, the main difference is how you can use it:

The main advantage of RMAN is the use of the catalog. It stores informations of the latest backups and allow to easily restore data.

VSS will work at a lower level, without your database being aware that it is backed-up. But VSS will allow you to backup your database using the same way (and tools) that you can use to backup a file server or an SQL-Server database.

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