Re: NetBackup Oracle on Hyper-V

Hi All,
Agreed, snapshots are not backups - but in this context they are not intended as such - simply as a consistency mechanism by which a backup can be made. From further reading about Hyper-V on Windows 2012R2, this renames the snapshots as checkpoints and furthermore these checkpoints provide support for Linux VMs without the need for VSS support on the O/S or applications.  So - I think(!) - this makes the VM backup crash-consistent; including the Oracle database running on it.   So not quite as complete a solution as backing up a Windows VM, where you can have application consistency, but possibly good enough for our purposes provided we're happy to endure crash recovery and loss of non committed data (which we are). Obviously, as pointed out, this requires thorough testing.   But I'm still really looking for confirmation on the concepts - I can see scenarios where it might work by fluke during on a test - but not in reality if it's not meant to work that way. Thanks!Charlotte  

    On Wednesday, August 29, 2018 10:17 AM, Stefan Koehler <contact_at_soocs.de> wrote:  

 Hello Charlotte,
snapshots are NO backup! You don't have any physical or logical corruption checks by doing snapshots on storage or VM level and so you are screwed if you discover some of these corruptions later on. Snapshots are fine in case of upgrade scenarios or so if you just want to revert very quickly to a specific point in time but are not a proper solution for continuous backup.

In addition you may experience VM freezing problems while doing snapshot backups if your database load increases, e.g. like this one I have troubleshot with Veeam and VMware (https://www.veeam.com/kb1681) at a client site.

NetBackup (or BackupExec) also got a MML for RMAN.

Best Regards
Stefan Koehler

Independent Oracle performance consultant and researcher Website: http://www.soocs.de
Twitter: _at_OracleSK

> Charlotte Hammond <dmarc-noreply_at_freelists.org> hat am 28. August 2018 um 20:22 geschrieben:
>
> Hello All,
>  
> I've been handed an Oracle environment using technologies that I'm unfamiliar with and am looking for guidance on first steps.  These are Oracle 11g/12c databases running on Linux VMs in Hyper-V.
>  
> The Hyper-V VMs are backed up using NetBackup which appears to use a temporary Snapshot (Checkpoint) of the entire VM followed by a backup of this snapshot.
>  
> The databases are used only for testing and have a lax RPO - simply go back to the last snapshot - no roll-forward required.
>  
> The question is what do I need to do?  Is simply allowing NetBackup to backup Hyper-V snapshots adequate for protecting the VM contents including (most importantly) the Oracle database?   If so is this entirely transparent to the VM / database?  Is there a requirement to put the database into backup mode during the snapshoting (and if so, how)?  Does the snapshot capture memory or just disk content - i.e. will this require crash recovery on restore?
>  
> Obviously testing will be required but I'm struggling to find appropriate information on concepts just to get started which suggests I'm asking the wrong questions, so any help will be very much appreciated!
>  
> Thank You!
> Charlotte

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