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rman + netbackup + ( Disk aray OR Virtual Tape Library )

jkhosravan
Level 3

Hi everyone... I am new to B&R so this is a noob question... unfortunately...

 

We use rman to do cold and hot backups using Netbackup to tape. However, now we want to move to disk first, and store 1 week worth of daily's and then to tape when the data is 8 days old.

 

Question is: Can we use just regular storage...1-2 TBs of NAS/DAS/SAN... OR...

  Does the Disk have to be a VTL...so that Netbackup thinks they are tape drives?

 

Thanks. Robot Happy

 

~J.K.  

 

3 REPLIES 3

Rakesh_Khandelw
Level 6

It doesn't have to be VTL. A simple disk storage unit or disk staging storage unit would work fine.

 

Since you want to create a tape copy after a week, it may be easy on your server if you use VTL. Reason I recommend that most of the VTLs these days provide direct tape creation, means to create the tape VTL can directly send the data to tape drives without flowing through the media servers, which saves you lots of time and server resources. But if your data size is small then it's not going to make much difference, you may end up paying high cost for VTL. 

jkhosravan
Level 3

Thank you Rakesh.

 

Currently, Netbackup runs a *.sh file which runs rman given the following params from Netbackup to rman: Hot/Cold , SID, #Channels.

 

Right now, those channels are drives on the robot. As a result, the sh file has the following line:

 

echo "allocate channel t${counter} type 'SBT_TAPE' parms=\"ENV=(NB_ORA_POLICY=${NB_ORA_POLICY}, NB_ORA_SERV=${NB_ORA_SERV})\""

 

which is created in a txt file, to be run at the command line.

 

Once we create a disk staging storage unit, and create a policy, will I just need to change "SBT_TAPE" to DISK" ?

 

Is it still possible to have multiple channels going to disk? Or do channels not work with Disk storage?

  

And why do we even let rman care about SBT_TAPE or DISK? Shouldn't that be transparent to rman? In other words, Netbackup should initiate the backup...rman starts the data transfer, and Netbackup saves it wherever it wants.

 

Thanks,

 

~J

Rakesh_Khandelw
Level 6

As per my understanding channel type SBT_TAPE is telling RMAN to use the NETBACKUP library to send the RMAN backup to NetBackup.

 

You do not need to change it even if you are using a disk storage unit instead of tape. 

 

Yes, you can send multiple channels to disk storage unit as well, that is controlled but either NB_ORA_PC_STREAMS= 2 or 3 or whatever number of channels you want

 

or you can control it through

 

ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch00 TYPE 'SBT_TAPE';
ALLOCATE CHANNEL ch01 TYPE 'SBT_TAPE';

 

NetBackup storage unit type is transparent to RMAN it doesn't care if you are using tape or disk.