You can use Storage Checkpoints to implement efficient backup and recovery of databases that have been laid out on VxFS file systems. A Storage Checkpoint allows you to roll back an entire database, a tablespace, or a single database file to the time that the Storage Checkpoint was taken. Rolling back to or restoring from any Storage Checkpoint is generally very fast because only the changed data blocks need to be restored.

Storage Checkpoints can also be mounted, allowing regular file system operations to be performed or secondary databases to be started.

For information on how to administer Storage Checkpoints, see Storage Foundation Administrator's Guide.

For information on how to administer Database Storage Checkpoints for an Oracle database, see Veritas InfoScale Storage and Availability Management for Oracle Databases.

Storage Checkpoints require space in the file systems where they are created, and the space required grows over time as copies of changed file system blocks are made. If a file system runs out of space, and there is no disk space into which the file system and any underlying volume can expand, VxFS automatically removes the oldest Storage Checkpoints if they were created with the removable attribute.