In December 2015, Veritas released NetBackup 2.7.1 (=7.7.1) for Appliances. There was a small "lag" between normal version of NetBackup and version for Appliances. This version introduces a new feature (available only on NetBackup Appliances) - Copilot for Oracle. Not once I have heard that Oracle admins do not want to use NetBackup to backup databases without their control. This feature addreses this problem and Oracle database administrators can use RMAN to control primary backup and recovery operation. NetBackup administrators are responsible for cataloging and secondary operations such replication and duplication if necessary.
As shown on the above figure, a NetBackup Administrator has to create a NFS share on NetBackup Appliance and this share needs to be mounted on Oracle servers. Oracle Admins have to configure backups via RMAN to the nfs share. NetBackup Administrator should create two SLP policies responsible for:
- Snapshot of share and backup from snapshot and optionally duplicate/replicate data if necessary.
- Backup Archive Redo Log (and also duplicate/replicate if necessary).
The last step is creating and configuring the Oracle Intelligent Policy (OIP) by NetBackup Admin.
When the backup is completed using NetBackup policy with mentioned SLPs, backup metadata is synced with the RMAN catalog. It allows to initiate restores from RMAN but also NetBackup as well.
NetBackup Copilot for Oracle requirements are as follows:
- NetBackup Master Server 7.7.1 or later
- NetBackup Appliance 5230 or later with software 2.7.1 or later
There is one thing that Copilot can use (even it's greyed in the policy) - NetBackup Accelerator. Copilot integrates with Oracle Incremental Merge technology and full backup images are automatically synthesized from changed blocks (it works similar to NetBackup Accelerator for VMware where Change Block Tracking (CBT) is used).
If you have NetBackup Appliance with 2.7.1 version already, please use this guide and test NetBackup Copilot for Oracle! If not, please read release notes before upgrading the appliance because Veritas changed appliance OS from SUSE to RedHat since version 2.7.1... 😉