This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

Oracle Environment Planning

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

Deployment

[For Linux OS and Unix] To install Veeam Plug-in, the /opt/veeam directory must be writable.

Oracle Temp Tablespace

Veeam Plug-in runs SQL queries on the Oracle database to collect statistical information about the RMAN job processes. As with any other SQL queries, Oracle can decide based on availability of hardware resources to use Oracle Temp Tablespace for these queries. Make sure that you configure the Temp Tablespace resources to avoid shortage of temporary tablespace. 

Scheduling

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 the one of the following guides:

Note

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

  • A backup job does not control the workflow of Oracle RMAN scripts. The backup job invokes the script and gets its exit status when the script is finished. Backup job logs show whether the script executed successfully or failed. The script is considered to be executed successfully if "0" is returned. In order to see that the script failed, configure the script to return an 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 it takes longer than 10 minutes to run the script, you can open a support ticket to increase the timeout.

Oracle RAC

Mind the following for Oracle RAC:

Oracle Backup Encryption

The Oracle Secure Backup SBT library is the only interface that supports RMAN encrypted backups. Veeam Plug-ins 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. To avoid the error, you must disable the backup encryption on the Oracle side.

Backup File Naming

During backup and restores, Veeam Plug-in uses the repositoryID parameter from the plug-in configuration file (veeam_config.xml). 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 format 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’;
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP FORMAT FOR DEVICE TYPE SBT_TAPE TO '%F_RMAN_AUTOBACKUP.vab’;

Backup files will be read by default from the first selected repository. Same naming rules apply as in the single repository scenario.

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 Documentation.

Backup of Control File and SPFILE

If you set CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP to ON, then RMAN automatically creates a control file and an SPFILE backup after you run the BACKUP command. For details, see the Oracle Documentation.

Controlfile Autobackup File Naming

If you perform the restore with different name and settings using Veeam Explorers for Oracle, 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 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.

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 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.

Additional Files to Back up

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

Oracle Home

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.

Veeam Plug-in for RMAN Configuration File

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

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 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

Since version 11, Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN has an official support of Oracle Data Guard.

Database Recovery

If you want to restore a database with a different name and settings using Veeam Explorer for Oracle, the database must use SPFILE. If SPFILE is not used, you will see a warning during a plug-in configuration.