Oracle on Linux VMs Requirements for Application-Aware Backups

For standalone Oracle databases running on Linux VMs, you can perform application-aware backups from a VSA subclient, then use the Oracle database agent to restore a database.

Application-aware backups using the Virtual Server Agent are supported for Oracle databases running on Linux VMs in the following configurations:

• Oracle VM, Azure Stack Hub, OpenStack, and VMware hypervisors

• UNIX versions of Oracle that are listed in System Requirements for the Oracle Agent

Linux Requirements

• For streaming or IntelliSnap VMware backups of Oracle database on Linux, use a Linux proxy that is configured as a File Recovery Enabler for Linux and has the Virtual Server Agent installed.

  The Linux proxy is also used to mount application snapshots for restores.

• Oracle requirements: For Linux VMs running Oracle, ensure that the following requirements are met:

  • Data and archive logs must be on separate volumes.

  • The DNS hostnames for Linux VMs must be the same as the machine names for the VMs.

  • Logical Volume Manager (LVM) should be configured to use native snapshots.

  • Ensure that the psmisc package is installed.

  • Automatic activation of volumes is disabled on the VSA proxy that is used for backups. See Disabling Automatic Activation of Volumes for Linux VMs.

• To back up a Linux VM running Oracle, ensure that the volume group has free space that is at least 4 GB greater than the size of the database. If multiple LVs are registered to a volume group, ensure that additional free space of 4 GB is available for each LV.

  For Linux LVM snaps, there must be adequate free space in the LVM volume group for snapshot creation. The default COW cache size is set to 4096 MB or 10% of the volume size, whichever is greater.

Application Credentials

To perform backups and restores for Oracle for Linux databases, a user account with admin privileges for the application and database is required.

VM Group Configuration

Include Linux virtual machines running Oracle in a separate VM group.

Archive Log Backups

Oracle for Linux database logs are automatically backed up as part of application-aware backups. The following methods provide log protection:

• A snapshot backup of the archive log volume is taken as part of application-aware backups.

• An automatic log backup schedule is created automatically after you run an application-aware backup successfully for the first time. A backup on the Archive Log Subclient runs immediately after the first successful application-aware backup.

• As part of the automatic log backup schedule, logs are backed up before the archive log destination reaches the available disk space threshold (by default, 70%), or at a regular interval (by default, every 24 hours).