Oracle Environment Planning

Before you deploy Veeam Plug-in, mind the following requirements and limitations:

• Oracle Temp Tablespace
• Scheduling
• Oracle RAC
• Backup File Naming
• Autobackup File Naming
• Parallel Processing
• Additional Files to Back Up
• Multiple Oracle Version on the Server
• Disable Veeam Explorer Processing

Oracle Temp Tablespace

Veeam performs SQL queries on the Oracle database to collect statistical information about the RMAN job process. As with any other SQL query, Oracle can decide based on RAM and other resource availability to use Oracle Temp Tablespace for these queries. Make sure you configure the Temp Tablespace resources to avoid shortage of temporary tablespace. 

Scheduling

You can schedule backup processes with all Oracle RMAN relevant scheduling options like Cron, Windows Task Scheduler, UC4 and TWS.

Also, you can schedule and run existing Oracle RMAN backup scripts within image-level or file-level backup job of Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agent. For details, see Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts.

Oracle RAC

• It is recommended to install Veeam Plug-in on each RAC server that is responsible for the backup operations. If the plug-in is not installed on all nodes, the backup may fail when RMAN selects another node.
• Veeam Plug-in supports parallel execution of all operations supported by Oracle RMAN: backup, restore, crosscheck, remove. This applies to execution of listed commands on one or multiple databases residing on one or multiple RAC nodes.
• For Oracle Database 12.2 and later versions, when you deploy RAC, Oracle does not add a record about RAC database instances in the oratab file. That is why Veeam Plug-in cannot detect these instances when you configure the plug-in. To configure the plug-in, you must manually add the record about each RAC database instance in the oratab file.
• If you perform restoring with different settings of RAC from a Veeam Plug-in backup via Veeam Explorer for Oracle, it will not be restored as a cluster database. It will be restored as a standalone database.

Backup File Naming

The plug-in configuration wizard reads out the repositoryID parameter from the plug-in configuration file (/opt/veeam/VeeamPluginforOracleRMAN/veeam_config.xml or %PROGRAMFILES%\Veeam\VeeamPluginforOracleRMAN\veeam_config.xml for Windows). In the veeam_config.xml file, the repository ID is stored in the following format: repositoryID=“xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx”.

To name backup files, Veeam Plug-in uses the following schema by default:

• If you select multiple Veeam repositories and disable RMAN copy processing:

Backup files will be read by default from the first selected repository. Same naming rules apply as in the single repository scenario.

• If you select multiple Veeam backup repositories and enable RMAN copy processing, you must use the repository ID with the “/” sign as a prefix for the backup file names (see the example above). This allows RMAN to directly access the requested backup file on one of the copy extents.

Autobackup File Naming

If you perform the restore with different name and settings using Veeam Explorers for Oracle, you must enable Controlfile Autobackup. If you use the Controlfile Autobackup option, the Veeam Plug-in configuration wizard creates the following RMAN configuration entry:

If the autobackup feature is enabled, you must use the “_RMAN_AUTOBACKUP” suffix as a part of the control file name.

If you enable autobackup after configuring Veeam Plug-in, you can start the configuration wizard again. The control file naming options will be set to defaults.

Parallel Processing

Veeam Plug-in supports parallel backup processing for up to 4 backup repositories or scale-out backup repositories. In the plug-in configuration wizard, if you select more than one repository, the parallelism functionality will be enabled automatically.

Note that your Oracle Enterprise Edition must be able to use RMAN parallel processing.

Additional Files to Back up

Oracle Home

• It is recommended to back up the Oracle home folder in addition to RMAN backups. You can back it up with Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agents.
• If the Oracle home folder is on a shared disk, you can use the file-level backup functionality of Veeam Agent for Linux. Alternatively, you can copy the Oracle home folder to a non-shared disk before the backup.

Oracle Recovery Catalog

You can back up the Oracle Recovery Catalog with Veeam Plug-in on the Recovery Catalog server according to the Oracle procedures. For details, see the Managing a Recovery Catalog section of the Database Backup and Recovery User's Guide.

Oracle Server for Disaster Recovery

To create an image-level backup of the Oracle server, you can use the image-level backup functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agents.

Veeam Plug-in for RMAN Configuration

You can back up the Veeam Plug-in configuration file. The file is located in the following directory:

• [Linux or Unix]: /opt/veeam/VeeamPluginforOracleRMAN/veeam_config.xml

• [Windows]: %PROGRAMFILES%\Veeam\VeeamPluginforOracleRMAN\veeam_config.xml

Oracle Data Guard

In the current version, Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN has an experimental support of Oracle Data Guard. Use Veeam Backup & Replication to back up Oracle Data Guard with full Veeam Technical Support.

Multiple Oracle Versions on One Server

Multiple Oracle Database versions deployed on the same machine are supported only for Linux or Unix based operating systems.

Disable Veeam Explorer Processing

To disable Veeam Explorer based restore for specific Oracle servers:

• [Linux or Unix] On the Oracle server, log in as a user with the Oracle Administrator rights and create an empty file in the following directory: /etc/veeam/disablerestore
• [Windows] On the Oracle server, create an empty file in the following directory: %ProgramData%\Veeam\disablerestore