Oracle Environment Planning

Before you deploy Veeam Plug-in, consider the following requirements and limitations.

On machines running Linux or Unix OS, consider the following prerequisites:

Before you install Veeam Plug-in, make sure that the /opt/veeam directory is writable.
Before you configure Veeam Plug-in, make sure that the NOEXEC mount option is disabled for the /var and /tmp directories.

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

If you use Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agents to create image-level backups of the Oracle server, you can schedule the backup job and run Oracle RMAN backup scripts along with the backup job. For detailed instructions on how to add Oracle RMAN scripts to a backup job, see one of the following guides:

For Veeam Backup & Replication: Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts section in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.
For Veeam Agent for Windows: Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts section of the Veeam Agent for Windows User Guide.
For Veeam Agent for Linux: Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts section of the Veeam Agent for Linux User Guide.

Note

If you want to use Oracle RMAN scripts within backup jobs of Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agents, consider the following:

A backup job does not control the workflow of Oracle RMAN scripts. The backup job invokes the script and gets an exit status when the script is finished. Backup job logs show if the script was executed successfully. The script is considered to be executed successfully if the return is "0". To see if the script failed, configure the script to return the exit status different than "0" in case of any errors.
The default timeout for a custom script in a backup job is 10 minutes. If the script runs longer than the default time, consider submitting a support case on the Veeam Customer Support Portal.

Oracle Temporary Tablespace

Veeam Plug-in runs SQL queries on the Oracle database to collect statistical information about the RMAN job processes. Based on availability of hardware resources, the Oracle server uses an allocated Oracle Temporary Tablespace to store the SQL queries.

To avoid lack of storage in the temporary tablespace, configure the Oracle Temporary Tablespace resources. For more information about creating and managing tablespaces, see this Oracle article.

Oracle RAC

For Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) environments, consider the following:

It is recommended to install Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN on each RAC server that is responsible for the backup operations. If the plug-in is not installed on all nodes, the backup process 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 these commands on one or multiple databases residing on one or multiple RAC nodes.
If you use Veeam Explorer for Oracle to restore a RAC database with different settings, it will not be restored as a cluster database, but as a standalone database. For more information about Oracle settings, see Specifying Oracle Settings in the Veeam Explorers user guide.

Oracle Backup Encryption

The Oracle Secure Backup SBT library supports RMAN encrypted backups. Veeam Plug-in does not support encrypted backups of Oracle databases.

If the backup encryption is enabled, Veeam Plug-in backup jobs fail with the following error: ORA-19919: encrypted backups to tertiary storage require Oracle Secure Backup. For more information about how you can disable the backup encryption to avoid this error, see this Oracle article.

Alternatively, you can use transparent data encryption (TDE) provided by Oracle. Using TDE, you can encrypt database data with an encryption key, back up encrypted data with Veeam Plug-in, then restore data with Veeam Plug-in and decrypt using the same encryption key. Restore with Veeam Explorer for Oracle is not supported for this scenario. To learn more about Oracle TDE encryption, see this Oracle article.

Naming of Database Files

Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN does not support non-printable ASCII charset symbols that have decimal values from 0 through 31, and 127 in ASCII table. If Veeam Plug-in processes a database file with one of the mentioned symbols, the backup operation finishes with an error.

Naming of Backup File

During backup and restore operations, Veeam Plug-in uses the repositoryID parameter from the Veeam Plug-in configuration file. In the Veeam Plug-in configuration file, the repository ID is stored in the following format: repositoryID=“xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx”.

By default, Veeam Plug-in uses the following format for backup files naming:

CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE PARMS 'SBT_LIBRARY=/opt/veeam/VeeamPluginforOracleRMAN/libOracleRMANPlugin.so' FORMAT 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/RMAN_%I_%d_%T_%U.vab';
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO '%F_RMAN_AUTOBACKUP.vab';

Before selecting multiple backup repositories for naming, consider the following:

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. This allows RMAN to directly access the requested backup file on one of the copy extents.

If you select multiple Veeam backup repositories and disable RMAN copy processing, backup files will be read by default from the first selected repository.

Important

In a backup file name, you cannot use the following symbols, which are reserved by Microsoft Windows:

To learn more about file naming conventions, see this Microsoft article.

Backup of Control File and SPFILE

If you set CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP option to ON, after you run the BACKUP command, RMAN will automatically create a control file and an SPFILE backup. For details about backing up the RMAN control file, see this Oracle article.

Controlfile Autobackup File Naming

When using the CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP option, consider the following for autobackup files naming:

If you perform a restore operation with Veeam Explorer for Oracle using a different database name and database settings, you must enable the autobackup of the control file.

If you use the CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP option, the Veeam Plug-in configuration wizard creates the following RMAN configuration entry:

CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO '%F_RMAN_AUTOBACKUP.vab';

If after configuring Veeam Plug-in you enable the CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP option, you must start the configuration wizard again. The control file backup naming option will be set to default.
If you enable the CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP option in a standalone server or an Oracle RAC environment, RMAN will create autobackup files with the same names for databases with the same database ID (DBID). This can cause Veeam Plug-in operation errors.

To avoid errors, you must provide unique names for individual databases. See the following example about how to add a unique identifier to the database using the db_unique_name parameter.

CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO '%F_ORCLUNIQNAME_RMAN_AUTOBACKUP.vab';

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

The use of RMAN parallel procesing must be enabled for the running Oracle Enterprise Edition.

Additional Files to Back Up

Veeam Plug-in creates backups of databases and logs. Apart from these files,

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 Backup & Replication or 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 this Oracle article.

Veeam Plug-in for RMAN Configuration File

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

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

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

Note

You can also create an image-level backup of the Oracle server using the image-level backup functionality of Veeam Backup & Replication or Veeam Agents.

Disabling Veeam Explorer Processing

You can disable Veeam Explorer for Oracle based restore for specific Oracle servers. To disable the restore on the Veeam Explorer for Oracle side, do the following:

[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

Oracle Data Guard

Veeam Plug-in in the standalone operation mode allows you to back up and restore databases in Oracle Data Guard configurations. Veeam Plug-in operating in the managed mode does not support Data Guard databases. To learn more about operation modes, see Standalone and Managed Operations Modes.

If you plan to restore Data Guard databases using Veeam Explorer for Oracle, consider limitations in the Restore of Data Guard Databases section of Veeam Explorers User Guide.

Database Recovery

Before you recover your database using Veeam Explorer for Oracle, consider the following:

If you want to restore a database with a different name and settings, the database must use SPFILE. If SPFILE is not used, a warning will be displayed during the Veeam Plug-in configuration.
If you use huge pages, make sure that you allocated enough memory to the system where you want to restore your database.