Oracle Environment Planning
Before you deploy Veeam Plug-in, mind the following requirements and limitations.
[For Linux OS and Unix] To install Veeam Plug-in, the /opt/veeam directory must be writable.
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.
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.
- 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.
- If you perform restoring with different settings of RAC from a Veeam Plug-in backup using Veeam Explorer for Oracle, it will not be restored as a cluster database. It will be restored as a standalone database.
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:
CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt PARMS 'SBT_LIBRARY=/opt/veeam/VeeamPluginforOracleRMAN/libOracleRMANPlugin.so’ FORMAT 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/RMAN_%I_%d_%T_%U.vab’; |
- If you select multiple Veeam backup 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.
Note |
[For Linux, Unix, Windows] In a backup file name, you cannot use symbols reserved by Microsoft Windows: "<" , ">", ":", "/", "\", "|", "?", "*". To learn more about file naming conventions, see Microsoft Docs. |
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:
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO '%F_RMAN_AUTOBACKUP.vab’; |
If you enable the control file autobackup after configuring Veeam Plug-in, you can start the configuration wizard again. The control file backup naming option will be set to default.
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.
Tip |
If you want to recover the Veeam Plug-in job folder to a specific point in time state, you can use Storage Replication (plus import) or the File Backup to Tape job of Veeam Backup & Replication. |
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
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.
Disabling Veeam Explorer Processing
You can disable Veeam Explorer 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
Since version 11, Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN has an official support of Oracle Data Guard.