Is it possible to do a DB2 table file backup/restore similar to MySQL?

Question

We currently use a Dell Equalogic SAN to snapshot our MySQL databases and copy them between our various development and integration environments. This allows us to work directly with large volumes of production data in a testing environment. The SAN makes these volumes instantly available for use (and avoids the need to copy large amounts of data). The process is roughly:

• Stop MySQL on source and destination volumes
• Snapshot source volume using Dell Equalogic
• Clone source snapshot to target volume
• Mount target volume to target /var/lib/mysql
• Start MySQL on both

We now need to introduce a DB2 instance into all of our environments and are trying to figure out if we can do something similar with DB2. The question is:

• Is this possible in DB2?
• What is the key directory or directories that we would need to clone and mount?
• Is there anything else that we might need to take into account?

Remember, the SAN is used because it allows us to snapshot and clone volumes > 150 gb and make them instantly available in any environment.

Answer 1

DB2 databases can be quickly cloned through SAN snapshot backup and split mirror techniques. The SET WRITE SUSPEND ON DATABASE command offers a simple, powerful switch that pauses all disk writes as long as necessary for the SAN snapshot to complete. Depending on the differences between the source and target database server, you may need to run utilities such as db2inidb or db2relocatedb at specific points in the process.