Oracle 10g - Backup Rman only or full VM

[Jamesduaneie]

Running 2 ESXI Hosts (5.5)
1 Server 2012 with Veeam Enterprise on it.

I have an Oracle 10g server (Server 2008 R2), The software company have a folder on it created called d:\Backups and they do an RMan into this nightly and overwrites every 5th night, they said if I can
backup this folder alone for them they can rebuild if necessary.

The server 2012 with Veeam is not on the same network/domain as the Oracle VM so I backup my VM's via Veeam over the hypervisors and this works fine for my other VM's and I can restore files to them if necessary and have tested this, my question now is on backing up the Oracle server.

If I try to backup the Oracle server VM now as usual will I upset the Oracle database ? Worried incase I crash or currupt it somehow with Veeam sinces its only 10g.

Is my other option to just backup this d:\Backups to another VM on the network and then backup that VM nightly ?

[dellock6]

If the d: disk is only used for the RMAN dumps, you can backup just this disk and exclude the OS disk, but in VMware still the entire VM will be snapshotted.
If the Oracle has VSS enabled and working, you can guarantee proper quiescense of the database by leveraging VSS itself.

[Vitaliy S.]

To the best of my knowledge Oracle 10g does not have VSS support. Anyway, creating and removing snapshot should not corrupt anything. You can try to reproduce the backup process by creating/removing VM snapshot via vSphere Client.

[dellock6]

VSS is enabled by default on 11 and above, but it can be installed since 9i, also by using the 11g version on an older installation. that's why I asked to check if it's enabled

[Jamesduaneie]

The D disk is used for other software , its just the D:\Backup folder I need.

No I think only 11G supports VSS.

Ok so If I create/delete a snap shot in VCenter then this would be the same as a Veeam backup of the VM ?

[Vitaliy S.]

Correct.

[Jamesduaneie]

Thank you, Should I be backup all my VM's up as 1 backup job to Disk, then one backup job to Tape afterwards or would it be better in terms of a restore of VM/files to have the Backup to Disks seperate?

[Vitaliy S.]

I suggest grouping you VMs based on these facts:

1. Similar OS (better dedupe)
2. Similar SLA (the same RPO/RTO)
3. Legal requirements for storing data (based on your company needs)

If you have a handful of VMs and all of them need to go to tape, then you can use a single backup job for that.