Overview - DB2 iDataAgent
Introduction
The DB2 iDataAgent provides you a unique, simplified, end-to-end backup and recovery solution for DB2 data in your enterprise. You can perform a granular backup and recovery of specific data files or logs in your database.
Key Features
Full Range of Backup and Recovery Options
The DB2 agent provides the flexibility to backup the DB2 databases in different environments. This is essential because the database constantly changes.
You can perform full, incremental or delta backups of the entire database or individual tablespaces, or archive logs.
Offline Backup
You can bring down the database and perform a backup of the database. An offline backup does not include archive logs.
Online Backup
In some environments, you cannot bring down a database to perform an offline backup. In such situations, you can perform an online backup, where the database is up and running during the backup.
You can perform either a full backup or incremental backup of the DB2 database when it is online.
Backup and Recovery Failovers
An backup MediaAgent resumes the backup or restore when the original MediaAgent, that is used for the backup or recovery operation fails.
In the event, that a network goes down, the backup and recovery jobs are resumed on alternate data paths. In the event of a device failure, the jobs are automatically switched to alternate disk and tape drives.
Efficient Job Management and Reporting
You can view and verify the status of backup and recovery operations from the Job Controller and the Event Viewer in the CommCell Console.
You can use pre-defined reports, or customized then to track job status. You can automatically schedule, save and distribute the reports.
Block-Level Deduplication
Deduplication provides a smarter way to store data by identifying and eliminating the duplicate items in a data protection operation.
Deduplication at the data block-level compares blocks of data against each other. If an object (such as, file, database) contains blocks of data that are identical to each other, then block-level deduplication does not store the redundant data, which reduces the size of the object in storage. This reduces the size of the backup data copies on both the disk and tapes.
Add-on Components
SnapProtect Backup
You can use the SnapProtect feature to create a point-in-time snapshot by temporarily quiescing the data, taking a snapshot, and then resuming live operations. A SnapProtect backup works in conjunction with hardware snapshot engines.Terminology
The documentation uses the following terminology:
Client |
The computer in which the iDataAgent is installed and contains the data to be secured. |
Instance |
The DB2 instance that contains the DB2 databases. |
Backupset |
The DB2 database to be used for the backup and restore operations |
Subclient |
The DB2 data to be backed up. |