Proxy Clients for Oracle Backup Copy Operations

Configure a proxy client to run the backup copy operations, which frees resources on the source client. The proxy client must be logged in and visible on the hardware array containing the snapshots to be copied to media.

File System Proxy Client Requirements

• The proxy client operating system must be the same or higher than the source client operating system.

• The File System Agent and MediaAgent must be installed on the client proxy.

RMAN Backup Copy Requirements

• The proxy instance is started in MOUNT mode using the backup control file from the IntelliSnap backup during an RMAN backup copy. Additional Oracle licenses may be required for proxy instances. Contact Oracle support to determine if additional Oracle licenses are required in your environment.

• The proxy client operating system must be the same or higher than the source client operating system.

• The Oracle Agent and MediaAgent must be installed on the proxy client.

• The Oracle user ID and group ID on the proxy client must be the same as on the source client otherwise the RMAN backup copy will fail due to permission issues.

• The Oracle database versions installed on the proxy and source clients must be compatible and the major version of Oracle must be the same.

• A recovery catalog database must be used and accessible from RMAN on both the source and proxy client.

• The proxy client must have the same directory structure for dump, diagnostic and data directories as the source client.

• When multiple source client database instances are configured to run a RMAN backup copy using the same proxy client may fail due to instance and database name conflicts. Move the conflicting database and instances to a different proxy.

• Configure an Oracle instance in the CommCell on the proxy client and use one of the following values for the client instance name:

  If you use a non-Oracle RAC proxy client, then the instance name must be the same name as the Oracle RAC database.

  For all other cases, the instance name must be the source client instance name.

  See Managing Instances.

• For non-ASM locations, all directories referring to Oracle parameters (for example db_create_file_dest) must exist and be accessible to Oracle.

The following are mandatory requirements for the RMAN Backup Copy Proxy client when ASM is used for storage on the source database.

• An Oracle ASM instance must be installed and running on the proxy client

• The Oracle ASM instance must be configured in the CommCell.

• Register the Oracle ASM with the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR) so RMAN can successfully mount the ASM disk groups.

• The Oracle ASM data diskgroup must not have the same name as any diskgroups on any source databases using the proxy. For example, if the source client ASM instance has a diskgroup named “DG1” then the proxy client ASM instance must not have “DG1” as a diskgroup name. Use the following SQL to find diskgroup names in use by ASM:

  SQlPLUS> select name,total_mb,free_mb from v$asm_diskgroup;

The proxy instance must be able to start up in the NOMOUNT mode using the PFile prior to backup copy. Create a PFile from the SP file on the source database with the following SQL command.

SQLPLUS> create pfile=/path/to/init<SID>.ora from spfile;

Copy the backup PFile to the proxy client’s $ORACLE_HOME/dbs (UNIX) or %ORACLE_HOME%/database (Windows) directory.

If the source database is an Oracle RAC database, create and copy the PFile using the method describe in the above paragraph, from one of the RAC clients to the corresponding location on the proxy client and delete or comment out the following line:

*.cluster_database=true

When the software starts the proxy database, it uses the source database control file. This ensures that the source and proxy databases have the same database ID and that the source database can pick up the same backup pieces in the recovery catalog.