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 Office 365 are installed, the notification settings will be inherited from the Veeam Backup & Replication Global Notification settings.
• [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.

• [For refreshable PDB] Data restore, data publishing and instant recovery are not supported for refreshable PDBs.

• [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.
• [Restore from Veeam Agent backups] Veeam Agent for Linux supports backup of the Btrfs file system only if Btrfs resides directly on a physical device with no additional abstraction layers below or above it. Configurations with Btrfs over LVM, software RAID, dm-crypt and so on are not supported. Thus, it is impossible to use Veeam Explorer for Oracle to restore data from such backups.

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 higher.
• [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 replicas and backups stored in the DR site by backup copy jobs, nor it is supported 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.
• 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

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 to original server: You must perform the restore with original name and settings.
• Restore to another server:

• You must perform the restore with original name and settings.
• 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.

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:

• Restore to original server

• You can restore Data Guard primary databases as primary databases only to the original location with the original name and settings.

• You can restore Data Guard standby databases as standby databases only to the original location with the original name and settings.

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

• Restore to another server

• Make sure that the copy of the original cluster already exists in the duplicated environment.

• 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.

• You can restore Data Guard primary databases as primary databases only with the original name and settings.
• You can restore Data Guard standby databases as standby databases only to the original location with original name and settings.

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

Restore of Oracle Databases

• 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.

• To restore a database with different name and settings, the database must use SPFILE (server parameter file).

Publishing from Image-Level Backups

• Make sure that the target Oracle server to which you publish your databases is of the same version as the database in the backup.
• 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.
• If OS authentication on a target Oracle server is disabled, the instant recovery of databases will not be possible.
• If OS authentication on a staging Oracle server is disabled, the instant recovery of databases 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.
• Instant recovery is not supported if tnsnames.ora and listener.ora are stored in a non-default location.
• 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.

Instant Recovery Process

• Veeam Explorer requires 512 MB RAM for instant recovery process for each database.
• During an instant recovery process, if you add a new pluggable database to the container, instant recovery session fails.
• During an instant recovery process, if you add a new tablespace or datafile to the published database while the database files are being copied, the instant recovery session fails.