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Replication Director Backup of Oracle Virtual Server with NFS Mounts?

efritz
Not applicable

First, the environment:

I have an Oracle 11.2.0.3 server running as a vSphere 5.5 virtual machine. The server (NOT its ESXi host) uses NFS to mount several filesystems for use by Oracle to store data files, archive logs, redo logs, control files, and the Oracle software. Those filesystems live on two clustered NetApp Filers, running Data ONTAP 8.1.2 in 7-mode. We currently do RMAN backups of the Oracle data to disk files (also stored on NFS-mounted NetApp volumes), and then use NetBackup 7.6 to back up those disk files.

This is simple, and has worked very well, giving us reliable backups. However, the databases have grown large enough to warrant a change in the way we do Oracle backups. The backups currently take far too long, and the jobs impact database response time negatively.

I'm trying to see if NetBackup, via Replication Directory 7.6, will do these steps:

1. Start, probably via a script, RMAN to quiesce the database, so there's a read-consistent image of the database files.

2. Create a NetApp snapshot for every NFS-mounted volume used by Oracle, probably using NetApp's SnapManager for Oracle (but that's just a guess).

3. Tell RMAN to open the database for general use.

4. Get NetBackup to back up the snapshots to tape.

Replication Director seems very new, and the documentation for it specifically says that only physical Oracle servers are supported, not virtual ones, although I don't understand why that' makes any difference.

If the above wish list is possible, then I need to figure out a way to do archive log management (i.e. running an RMAN job to back up the archive logs to a file, and then delete the original logs).

If the above is possible, it decreases significantly the time the database is busy due to backup jobs running, from hours to minutes. That's the impetus behind this change.

 

1 REPLY 1

Marianne
Moderator
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Seems experience with Replicator Director is very few and far between.

Probably best to log a Support call to ask these questions...
Another option would be to reach out to Product Management via your local reseller or Symantec office.