SPARC and Oracle DB Best practices

[DaveDSI]

Hi Veeam Forum,

We are trying to map out the best practices for a Veeam backup of Oracle Solaris SPARC and Oracle DB to Veeam and if/how others have achieved this.

Currently we quite a few Oracle Solaris SPARC Servers that have Oracle DB installed on Solaris Branded Zones, as Veeam can't backup up Oracle DB's directly yet what has worked for others on this type of setup.

Also from backing up the Solaris SPARC Servers themselves, we currently do UAR backups as these provide the correct restore functions needed, but is there an option for Veeam to replicate what a UAR backup would be, or like with Oracle DB backups would we need to land the UAR backups to a landing zone and then Veeam backsup from there.

Thanks

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi Dave, I am not a Solaris expert, but please allow me to ask some basic questions. In the Branded Zone, are you not able to run our SBT plug-in along side of Oracle DB and backup to Veeam with it?
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=120

If not, is it a technical limitation or a design choice "for security reasons"?

[DaveDSI]

Hi Andreas,

The Database plugin would be installed yes within the Branded Zone, but this needs to be pointed to a landing zone as can't be backed up natively.

Have you got a setup backing up Solaris on SPARC and also Oracle DB and what does this setup look like?

Thanks

[Andreas Neufert]

Hi Dave,

I do not have a SPARC system by hand.
If I understand it correctly, you run Oracle DB in a Branded Zone, install the Veeam Plug-in for Oracle RMAN manually there, configure it for a Veeam Backup server (authentication) and select Repository server. Why would a landing zone be needed?
RMAN start with the channel definition of our plug-in. RMAN would write data through the Veeam SBT plug-in directly to the repository server.

[Max.T]

Hi,

I have never worked with Solaris Branded Zones, only with regular Zones, but it seems that we could run our plugin inside such a zone if the OS version within the zone is compatible with our plugin. This is because essentially it acts as a compatibility layer that translates system calls.

For example, our plugin supports Solaris 10 and 11:
In Solaris 11, it is possible to create a solaris10 branded zone that emulates a Solaris 10 environment.
Inside such a zone, everything looks and behaves like a real Solaris 10 system (filesystem, packages, libc, etc.), while system calls are translated to the Solaris 11 kernel.
As a result, binaries of our plugin that were built for Solaris 10 should be able to run there without modification.