Backup Support For SAP in BE.2014

[syed_jahanzaib]

We have recently upgraded our SAP Server. Currently we do Full Backup(IDR) in night by stopping oracle services and sap instances (using scripts),

, then BE starts full backup. (kind of offline backup)

Is there any way we can do ONLINE backup of SAP without any downtime of sap services availability?
 

[pkh]

No.  There is no way to do an online backup.

Even an offline backup is not the answer.  See my  blog below

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/can-i-backup-sap-database-sql-or-oracle-agent

You should also check your backup because BE automatically excludes certain file types from any backup so your Oracle database files may not be included in the backup.

You should be looking at something like NetBackup which provide a proper agent to backup SAP.

[syed_jahanzaib]

I dont know how but offline backup works fine.

I have tested the backup and restoration of SAP servers (offline. It works fine. I tested it several times by restoring to another box, and give access to our SAP developers , they worked on it by passing few transactions, checked old entries, modify few things, and they confirmed every transaction and db is intact and works ok.

[pkh]

Backing up and restoring the entire server could work but as you found out, it is too much trouble if this is an ongoing thing

[teiva-boy · Accepted solution]

You can script out brtools to completely back up sap and oracle online. Its totally possible unlike what others may say. However if you own and run SAP on Oracle, you really should upgrade your software away from BackupExec. There are many other enterprise ready tools that support SAP natively. DataDomain even has an integration module that ties into brtools, eliminating backup software and using a very solid dedupe appliance. Oh that appliance supports BE too, so there's that too...

[pkh]

Ah!! I forgot about the native SAP tools.  You can use these to backup your SAP databases while they are online and then backup the flat files produced by these tools with BE.  This way you don't have to shutdown the SAP databases during your backup.

To restore your SAP databases, you restore the flat files using BE and then use the SAP tools to restore the SAP databases from the restored flat files.

[syed_jahanzaib]

Thank you very much all of you for answering my question. I appreciate your quick response.

Since there is no intention to upgrade or replace the BE with any other tool, What are my best options to do ONLINE backup using BE and BRTOOLS (combination) for ...

1- Backup whole SAP server including OS and sap installation drive (excluding ORA_ARCHIVE), Daily for DR Purpose (like if hardware failure occurs, restore to alternate server, overall size of OS+SAP is 500 GB)

2- Script the brtools to backup sap and oracle db ?

for option #1 , what components should I exclude?

for option #2, as it will backup only oracle DB, so in order to restore whole SAP system, I first restore the OS and sap related drive (using SDR) , then using brtool to restore the oracle db ?

is this correct path ?

[pkh · Accepted solution]

To backup

1) Use brtools to backup the SAP database to a flat file and back this up.

2) Backup the entire server as you described earlier, but without shutting down SAP.

To restore

1) Restore the entire server as you have described earlier

2) restore the flat file produced by the brtools and then use this file to restore the SAP database using brtools.