Transaction Log Settings: Oracle

If you back up an Oracle VM, you can specify how Veeam Backup & Replication must process transaction logs on this VM:

1. At the Guest Processing step of the wizard, select the Enable application-aware processing check box.
2. Click Applications.
3. In the displayed list, select the Oracle VM and click Edit.
4. In the Transaction logs section, select Process transaction logs with this job.
5. In the VM Processing Settings window, click the Oracle tab.

6. In the Specify Oracle account with SYSDBA privileges section, specify a user account that Veeam Backup & Replication will use to connect to the Oracle database. The account must have SYSDBA rights on the Oracle database.

You can select Use guest credentials in the list of user accounts. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will use the account specified at the Guest Processing step of the wizard to access the VM guest OS and connect to the Oracle database.

7. In the Archived logs section, specify if Veeam Backup & Replication must truncate transaction logs on the Oracle VM:

• Select Do not delete archived logs if you want Veeam Backup & Replication to preserve archived logs on the VM guest OS. When the backup job completes, the runtime process will not truncate transaction logs.

It is recommended that you select this option for databases for which the ARCHIVELOG mode is turned off. If the ARCHIVELOG mode is turned on, transaction logs on the VM guest OS may grow large and consume all disk space. In this case, the database administrator must take care of transaction logs him-/herself.

• Select Delete logs older than <N> hours or Delete logs over <N> GB if you want Veeam Backup & Replication to truncate archived logs that are older than <N> hours or larger than <N> GB. The log size threshold refers not to the total size of all logs for all databases, but to the log size of each database on the selected Oracle server.

The runtime process running on the VM guest OS will wait for the backup to complete successfully and then trigger transaction logs truncation via Oracle Call Interface (OCI). If the job does not manage to back up the Oracle VM, the logs will remain untouched on the VM guest OS until the next start of the runtime process.

8. To back up Oracle transaction logs with Veeam Backup & Replication, select the Backup log every <N> minutes check box and specify the frequency for transaction logs backup. By default, transaction logs are backed up every 15 minutes. The maximum log backup interval is 480 minutes.

9. In the Retain log backups section, specify retention policy for transaction logs stored in the backup repository:

• Select Until the corresponding image-level backup is deleted to apply the same retention policy for image-level backups and transaction log backups.
• Select Keep only last <n> days to keep transaction logs for a specific number of days. By default, transaction logs are kept for 15 days. If you select this option, you must make sure that retention for transaction logs is not greater than retention for the image-level backups. For more information, see Retention for Transaction Log Backups.

10. In the Log shipping servers section, click Choose to select what log shipping server you want to use to transport transaction logs:

• Select Automatic selection if you want Veeam Backup & Replication to select an optimal log shipping server automatically. The process of transaction logs shipment does not require a dedicated server — Veeam Backup & Replication can use any Microsoft Windows or Linux server added to the backup infrastructure.
• Select Use the specified servers only to define a log shipping server explicitly. In the Log Shipping Servers window, select check boxes next to servers that you want to use as log shipping servers. The server list includes all Microsoft Windows servers added to the backup infrastructure.

Make sure that you select a server that is not engaged in other resource-consuming tasks. For example, you may want not to use a server that performs the WAN accelerator role as a log shipping server. For load balance and high availability purposes, it is recommended that you select at least 2 log shipping servers.