Considerations and Limitations

This section lists considerations and known limitations of Veeam Explorer for Oracle.

General

  • When Veeam Explorer for Oracle is installed on a server on which both Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365 are installed, the notification settings will be inherited from the Veeam Backup & Replication Global Notification settings.
  • [Restore to Linux server] You can restore data over SSH only, restore using Linux Management Agent is not supported.
  • [Restore to Linux server] Restore with Veeam Explorer for Oracle is not supported if the SQL*Plus environment on the target Oracle server is configured to use glogin.sql or login.sql profile files. For details, see the Configuring SQL*Plus section of the SQL*Plus User's Guide.
  • [Restore to Linux server] Restore of databases that resided in an encrypted file system on the original server is not supported. In particular, encrypted LVM volumes are not supported.
  • Veeam Explorer for Oracle does not support data restore, data publishing, instant recovery and export of refreshable pluggable databases (PDBs). To restore refreshable PDBs, use Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN.
  • Restore, publishing, instant recovery, and export operations of Oracle data from replicas can only recover your data to the latest state of the selected restore point. Replication jobs do not copy Oracle archived logs so data recovery to a point-in-time state is not supported.
  • Starting from Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1, Veeam Explorer for Oracle supports data recovery from CDP replicas. Consider the following limitations:
  • Restore, publishing, instant recovery, and export operations of Oracle data from CDP replicas can only recover your data to the latest state of the selected long-term restore point. CDP policies do not copy Oracle archived logs so data recovery to a point-in-time state is not supported.
  • When you recover your data from CDP replicas, you can only use long-term (both application-consistent and crash-consistent) restore points. Short-term restore points are not supported.
  • You can recover your data from a CDP replica if its CDP policy is currently running. During recovery, the CDP policy does not create new long-term restore points and does not delete existing ones. Short-term restore points are still created.
  • You cannot restore application items from a CDP replica in parallel with guest OS file restore, SureReplica, and failover.
  • [Restore from VM backups] Mount of Btrfs disks will fail if you want to perform instant recovery, data restore or data publish to the original server. The issue occurs due to restriction for mounting 2 Btrfs disks with identical IDs to the same machine.

Note that Btrfs volumes on the backed-up Veeam Agent machine must have identifiers in the UUID format in the fstab configuration file.

  • Mount operations with FUSE are not supported on kernel versions 4.0.0 – 4.1.33. Make sure to upgrade the kernel to version 4.1.37 or later.
  • Starting from Veeam Backup & Replication 12.1, Veeam Explorer for Oracle supports SSH fingerprint validation of target Linux machines with PostgreSQL. For more information on how to configure this feature, see the Linux Hosts Authentication section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

If you have selected the more secure, manual validation in the Veeam Backup & Replication console, consider the following:

  • If the target server is unknown or its fingerprint cannot be recognized, you will be able to proceed with the recovery operation after you manually validate the fingerprint in the Veeam Backup & Replication console.
  • If you have already validated the fingerprint of a target server, but you use an alternative network identifier (IPv4, IPv6, FQDN, or hostname) for the same server in a new Veeam Explorer for Oracle session, you must validate the fingerprint again to proceed with the recovery operation.
  • [For restore to Oracle ASM] You cannot specify paths and file names for restored database files. During restore, Oracle ASM will automatically create and name the necessary files in the specified disk group using the OMF (Oracle Managed Files) feature.

Restore from Image-Level Backups

  • Veeam Explorer for Oracle does not support restore using PowerShell Direct, VIX API or vSphere Automation API.
  • 1-Click restore to the original location from storage snapshots is not supported.
  • A point in time restore is not supported for backups stored in the DR site by backup copy jobs and for backups stored in a cloud repository. Such repositories cannot be used as a destination location for archived logs.
  • Restore of databases from the current restore point is only supported for backups created by Veeam backup job, replication job, VeeamZIP and for imported backup and storage snapshots.
  • Before you use Veeam Backup & Replication to back up an Oracle database that was converted from a RAC database to a non-cluster database, make sure to disable all online redo log threads that are managed by other instances. Otherwise, Veeam Explorer for Oracle will not be able to restore the database.
  • If OS authentication on a target Oracle server is disabled, the restore of databases with enabled ASM will not be possible.
  • If OS authentication on a staging Oracle server is disabled, the restore of databases with enabled ASM as of the selected transaction state will not be possible.
  • Make sure that both the backed-up Oracle machine and the target server to which you are restoring have the same OS patch version.
  • Oracle Automatic Storage Management Filter Driver (Oracle ASMFD) is not supported.

Restore from RMAN Backups

Important

Restore from RMAN backups is not possible if OS authentication is disabled on the target Oracle server.

Restore of Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC)

To restore RAC databases from RMAN backups, make sure you apply the following restore settings. Otherwise, the databases will be restored as standalone databases.

Restore of Data Guard Databases

Data restore with Veeam Explorer for Oracle from backups of Data Guard databases created by Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN has experimental support. You can restore Data Guard databases from Veeam Plug-in backups with the following limitations:

A restore with different settings will fail due to Data Guard limitations.

A restore with different settings will fail due to Data Guard limitations.

Restore of Oracle Databases

  • Before you restore an Oracle database from an RMAN backup to another server, make sure that the account used to connect the plug-in on the target server to the backup server and backup repository meets the following requirements:
  • The account must either have the Veeam Backup Administrator, or both the Veeam Backup Operator and Veeam Restore Operator roles. You can also use the account under which the backup was created. For more information on how to assign Veeam Backup & Replication roles, see the Users and Roles section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
  • The account must have access permissions to the backup repository where the backup is stored. For more information, see the Access and Encryption Settings on Repositories section of the Veeam Plug-ins for Enterprise Applications Guide.

If the account does not meet these requirements, you must configure the plug-in on the target server with the credentials of an account that meets the requirements or with a recovery token. You can do this by running the following command on the target server:

OracleRMANConfigTool --set-auth-data-for-restore

For more information about this command, see the Restore to Another Server section of the Veeam Plug-ins for Enterprise Applications Guide.

  • When restoring to another server with the original name and settings, consider the following:
  • The Oracle home and Oracle directory structure must remain the same.
  • You must copy the original control file to the target server or recovery catalog of the database which is running in the duplicated cluster. Such a control file must contain information about backups from which the restore is being performed.
  • For Oracle ASM, the file system structure of the restored database must remain the same.
  • With Veeam Explorer for Oracle, you can restore entire multitenant container databases (CDBs); restore of individual pluggable databases (PDBs) is not supported. To restore individual PDBs, use Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN.
  • To restore your database with a different name and settings, you must use a server parameter file (SPFILE) for the database and set CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP to ON before backup. For more information, see the Oracle Environment Planning section of the Veeam Plug-ins for Enterprise Applications Guide.

Publish

  • Make sure that the target Oracle server to which you publish your databases is of the same version as the database in the backup.
  • Make sure that the volume with the write cache has enough free disk space to store the changes of the published database. The write cache is stored in the /var/tmp folder on the target server.
  • If the database that you publish is part of the ASM group, make sure that the target Oracle server also has an ASM group properly configured.

Instant Recovery

  • For Oracle Database 12c, instant recovery is supported starting from version 12.2.0.1.0.211019.
  • Instant recovery is supported for image-level backups only. You cannot perform instant recovery from RMAN backups.
  • Make sure that both the backed-up Oracle machine and the target server to which you are restoring have the same OS patch version.
  • Instant recovery of the entire Oracle Data Guard is not supported. However, you can restore individual Data Guard databases.
  • Instant recovery of SAP on Oracle is not supported.
  • If you plan to perform scheduled or manual switchover, make sure that the volume with the write cache has enough free disk space to store the changes of the published database.
  • For Windows machines, the write cache is stored on the mount server. You can configure the mount server in the backup repository settings. For more information, see the Specify Mount Server Settings section of the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
  • For Linux machines, the write cache is stored in the /var/tmp folder on the target server.
  • During the instant recovery process, Veeam Explorer for Oracle requires 512 MB of RAM for each database.
  • If you add a new pluggable database to the container during an instant recovery process, the instant recovery session fails.