Backup - SAP for Oracle and SAP for MAXDB

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Overview

Supported Backup Types

Parameter File

Backups with RMAN Utility

Backup Jobs

• Full and Partial Full Backups
• SAP for MAXDB Selective Online Full Backups
• SAP for Oracle Selective Online Full Backups
• Incremental Backups
• Basic Backup Procedures

Backup Considerations for This Agent

Overview

SAP for Oracle backups can be run from both the CommCell Console and the SAP command line. However, SAP for MAXDB backups can be run only from the SAP command line.

Plan your backup jobs for this agent by reviewing the following information:

• For an overview of backup jobs, see Backup Data.
• For a list of supported data types for this agent, see Supported Data Types.

Supported Backup Types

This agent supports the following backup types:

• Full and Partial Full Backups
• SAP for MAXDB Selective Online Full Backups
• SAP for Oracle Selective Online Full Backups
• Incremental Backups
• Backups using the util_file, util_file_online, and rman_util options

Parameter File

Before you run SAP for Oracle or SAP for MAXDB backups, ensure that the appropriate parameter file containing information regarding the instance and the client is in place. Be sure to include at least the CVInstanceName parameter name followed by the name of the instance and also the CVClientName parameter name followed by the name of the client.

• For SAP for Oracle on UNIX, include this information in the init.utl file under the $ORACLE_HOME/dbs directory.
• For SAP for Oracle on Windows, include this information in the init.utl file in any location and execute the brbackup command with option –r .
• For SAP for MAXDB on Unix, include this information in the param file under <software_install_folder>/SapMaxDbAgent.
• For SAP for MAXDB on Windows, include this information in the param file under the SAP MAXDB config file directory provided by the user in the installation pop-up window.

• For any SAP for Oracle version, if your backups and restores will be using the SAP utility and you want to use the UTIL_FILE option, be sure to modify the init<SID>.utl file by adding values for the following parameters. Note that some parameters are optional.

  • CvInstanceName <name of instance>, which specifies the name of the instance for the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent (for example, Instance001)
  • CvClientName <name of client>, which specifies the name of the computer with the installed SAP for Oracle iDataAgent (for example, bumblebee)
  • numstreams <number of streams> (optional), which specifies the number of streams. Default value is 1 (for example,1)

  NOTES:

  • Ensure that you modify the storage policy as appropriate.

  • CV_restCopyPrec <name of copy> (optional), which specifies the copy to restore from. Default value is 0, which means any available copy (for example, copy1)
  • srcCrossClient <name of source client> (optional), which specifies the name of the source client with the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent for cross-machine restore purposes (for example, hotdog)

  NOTES:

  • Ensure that the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent is installed on both the source computer and the target computer, and run the restore on the target computer.

  • SelectiveOnlineFull <option> (optional), which specifies whether you can run a selective online full backup from the client. To enable this capability, set the parameter value to 1; to disable this capability, set the parameter value to 0.

  For example:

  CvInstanceName

  Instance001

  CvClientName

  bumblebee

  numstreams

  1

  CV_restCopyPrec

  1

  srcCrossClient

  hotdog

  SelectiveOnlineFull

  1

• For SAP for MAXDB, to enable a selective online full backup from the client, include the SelectiveOnlineFull parameter in the param file and set the parameter value to 1. To disable this capability, set the parameter value to 0.

Backups with RMAN Utility

• For SAP for Oracle on Unix, if your backups will be using the RMAN utility, be sure to do the following before you run any backups:

  1. Ensure that $ORACLE_HOME/lib and $ORACLE_HOME/lib64 are in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.
  2. Modify the SAP database init file (init<SID>.sap) under $ORACLE_HOME/dbs by adding the following:

     RMAN_PARMS="SBT_LIBRARY=/<install path>/<Base directory version>/libobk.<xx>,ENV=(CvClientName=<client name>,CvInstanceName=<instance name>"

     For example:

     RMAN_PARMS="SBT_LIBRARY=/opt/hds/Base64/libobk.so,ENV=(CvClientName=aha,CvInstanceName=Instance001)"

• When performing backups using RMAN utility on a Solaris client, ensure that you set the following parameter on the client computer:

  crle -64 -c /var/ld/64/ld.config -l/opt/calypso/Base64:/lib/64:/usr/lib/64

• For SAP for Oracle on Windows, if your backups will be using the RMAN utility, be sure to modify the SAP database init file (init<SID>.sap) by adding the following:

  RMAN_PARMS="ENV=(CvClientName=<client name>,CvInstanceName=<instance name>"

  For example:

  RMAN_PARMS="ENV=(CvClientName=bumblebe,CvInstanceName=Instance001)"

Backup Jobs

This agent has the following unique functionality.

• Full and Partial Full Backups
• SAP for MAXDB Online Full Selective Backups
• SAP for Oracle Selective Online Full Backups
• Incremental Backups
• Basic Backup Procedures

Full and Partial Full Backups

Full and partial full backups are supported by the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent. Full backups are supported by the SAP for MAXDB iDataAgent. A full backup contains an entire database, and a partial full backup can contain one or more tablespaces or datafiles. For the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent, full and partial full backups are supported using either the util_file or rman_util option. The full backup or partial full backup becomes a baseline to which subsequent incremental backups are applied should data restoration be requested. For more information on full backups, see the appropriate SAP documentation.

SAP for MAXDB Selective Online Full Backups

For SAP for MAXDB, an online full backup job is copied to a selective copy if the full backup job cycle completes successfully and if the selective copy feature is enabled. In fact, for a successful cycle, all of the jobs within the cycle are copied to a selective copy. If the cycle is not successful, none of the jobs are copied to a selective copy.

To enable backups using selective copy for SAP for MAXDB from the CommCell Console, execute the following command in the CommServe SQL database:

insert into gxglobalparam values ('ForceSAP_longRetention', '1')

To disable the selective copy feature, execute the following command:

delete from gxglobalparam where name = 'ForceSAP_longRetention'

To enable backups using selective copy from the client,  include the SelectiveOnlineFull parameter in the param file and set the parameter value to 1. See Parameter File for more information.

Successful completion of a online full backup cycle requires the successful completion of a full data backup job and a corresponding configuration job followed eventually by a full log backup job and a corresponding configuration job. (Configuration jobs are secondary jobs that are automatically spawned.) As such, the shortest successful cycle can be illustrated as follows:

DATA, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (pass)

LOG, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (pass)

In this example, each required job has completed successfully within the full backup cycle. Therefore, the full data backup job (along with all the other jobs in the cycle) will be copied to a selective copy.

A full backup cycle can include other backup job types (e.g., incremental backup jobs). If the full backup cycle is successful, these jobs are also copied to a selective copy. The next example includes incremental backup jobs within the cycle:

DATA, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (pass)

DATA, INCR (pass), CONFIG, INCR (pass)

LOG, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (fail)

DATA, INCR (pass), CONFIG, INCR (pass)

LOG, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (pass)

In this case, the first attempt at running the configuration job for the full log backup job failed; however, the second attempt succeeded and therefore completed a successful cycle. As a result, each job (total of 10) within the cycle will be copied to a selective copy. This includes the one configuration job that failed.

In the next example, a full backup cycle is started before the cycle before it completes:

DATA, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (pass)

DATA, INCR (pass), CONFIG, INCR (pass)

DATA, FULL (pass), CONFIG, FULL (pass)

As such, none of the four backup jobs in the first cycle can be copied to a selective copy.

SAP for Oracle Selective Online Full Backups

When a full backup is taken of the SAP for Oracle database while it is online, you can use the CommCell Console to copy the backup data to a selective copy (during an Auxiliary Copy operation) from which it can be restored.

To enable backups using selective copy from the client,  include the SelectiveOnlineFull parameter in the param file and set the parameter value to 1. See Parameter File for more information.

The advantage of this type of backup is that both data and logs use the same storage policy, which means that they reside together on the same media, and are completely self-contained for restore and long-term archiving purposes. This is especially useful in disaster recovery situations by alleviating the need to locate different offsite media from various jobs to gather the necessary data and logs to recover the database. Also, the data aging rules for selective online full backups are different from regular full backups, as both data and logs are aged together under the same storage policy.

There are certain rules that pertain to this type of backup that you should keep in mind:

• A selective online full backup job will wait for other SAP for Oracle backup jobs currently running on the same instance to complete before it begins.
• For this type of backup, both data and archive logs will use the same storage policy as defined for data in the subclient, and will ignore the storage policy setting for archive logs (which is defined at the instance level).

• During selective online full backups, if the data streams (defined at the subclient level) is less than the archive log streams (defined at the instance level), then both the data phase and the archive log phase will use the same number of streams defined for the data in the subclient, and will ignore the number of streams set for the archive logs.

• While the data backup phase of a selective online full backup is running, the only other SAP for Oracle backup jobs that are allowed to run on the same instance are archive log backups. During the log backup phase of a selective online full backup, no other SAP for Oracle backups are allowed to run (neither logs nor data) on the same instance.
• If other SAP for Oracle archive log backup jobs are run at the same time as the selective online full backup, they will be forced to use the same storage policy used by the selective online full backup during the time-frame in which the selective online full backup job is running, and will be included in the same Auxiliary Copy operation. Refer to SAP for more information on special data aging rules for selective online full backups.

Incremental Backups

Incremental backups are supported by the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent and the SAP for MAXDB iDataAgent. For the SAP for Oracle iDataAgent, incremental backups are supported only when you are using the rman_util (Oracle Recovery Manager) option. For more information on incremental backups, see the appropriate SAP documentation.

Basic Backup Procedures

Note the following:

• SAP for Oracle and SAP for MAXDB iDataAgent backups can be performed either online or offline.
• The following items pertain to SAP for Oracle backups:
  • Incremental backups must use (and full backups and partial full backups may use) the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN). Since SAP is integrated with RMAN, the RMAN recovery catalog is not used for backups (whether full or incremental). Instead, information on the backups is stored in a control file that is saved after each backup. Thereafter, whenever data is restored, the control files are copied back first, and then the data is restored.
  • When you run a backup using the rman_util interface from the CommCell Console, multiple command line jobs can be initiated during the data backup. One command line job per RMAN stream can be initiated. The CommCell Console job ID is used to back up the control file and the data configuration files.
  • The same CommCell Console job ID that is used to back up the control file and data configuration files per the scenario in the preceding bullet item is used to back up the logs if you are using the uti1_file interface.
  • The rman_util interface is not used for log backups from the CommCell Console even if you select this interface. Instead, the uti1_file interface is selected and used by the system.
  • For a command line backup, there is a separate job run for each of the following: data backup, configuration backup, and log backup.

Backup Considerations for This Agent

Before performing any backup procedures for this agent, review the following information:

• The Job Controller progress bar will not display the progress of SAP for MAXDB backup and restore jobs accurately. This is true because Calypso cannot detect data or objects transferred by SAP for MAXDB due to the way SAP for MAXDB transfers these items.
• The SAP for MAXDB iDataAgent supports multiple streams for database file backups only, not for log and control file backups. The SAP for Oracle iDataAgent does not have this restriction for multiple stream backups. For more information, see Streams.

• Multiple streams are supported for data protection and recovery operations with this agent; however, before utilizing multiple streams, you should understand how their use affects operations. For more information, see Streams.

• For SAP for Oracle, multistream log backups are not supported from the CommCell Console. Such backups are supported from the Command Line Interface.

• When performing SAP for Oracle offline backups from the CommCell Console, the database is forced to shutdown by default. However, you can disable this by setting the sNOOFFLINEFORCE registry key on the client computer with SAP for Oracle iDataAgent.

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