Hi Stan,
There are only two issues I can think of with this:
1. Do you get the same or better dedup when Oracle writes directly to the
DD versus when NetWorker encodes that data.
2. How will you manage retention of his database dumps, or does he do that
already?
--Dave
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 09:23:19 -0400
From: "STANLEY R. HORWITZ" <stan AT TEMPLE DOT EDU>
Subject: Backing up Oracle directly to Data Domain vs nfs mount copy
I am currently testing a new Red Hat Linux 7.6 SP2 RA server (all 64-bit).
In production, we have an Oracle server that runs on Red Hat Linux. Our dba
refuses to use the NetWorker Oracle module. Instead, he does RMAN dumps of
our databases from the production Oracle server to another mount point on
the same server. Both the production Oracle and backup RMAN data sit on our
SAN on different LUNs. This backup mount point is owned by another Linux
server who's only purpose in life is to own this mount point and have it be
backed up to physical LTO-3 tape by our production NetWorker 7.5.3 server.
These LTO-3 tapes are sent off-site daily. Our current production NetWorker
hardware is due to be phased out in a few weeks.
The question that was put to me is if it would be better to put the backup
storage mount point on our Data Domain instead of our NAS and do away with
the Linux server that owns the SAN mount point for our RMAN backups.
Up until now, I was assuming I would continue backing up the SAN backup
mount point on the current backup manager using NetWorker 7.6 SP2 (with Data
Domain boost) to Data Domain and then clone that backup every day to
LTO-5 tape on a new tape library for off-site storage. So if our dba can
write his RMAN backups directly from our production Oracle server to a mount
point that lives on our Data Domain server, it seems like we can avoid the
process of having NetWorker back it up from a NAS mount point to Data Domain
Boost device, and instead just mount the same Data Domain Mount point in r/w
mode on our new NetWorker 7.6 SP2 server and back it up directly to tape
from our new NetWorker server.
Does this sound like a feasible plan and would it indeed be better (i.e.,
faster) than using NetWorker to back up the RMAN data from a NAS mount point
to a Data Domain Boost device, then cloning the data to physical
LTO-5 tape? It would mean that our dba will need to do restores from the
Data Domain device differently than he does now from tape using NetWorker.
I am wondering if there are any down sides to this approach. We intend to
back up everything else via Data Domain Boost and NetWorker with the vast
majority of clients NOT being cloned to tape, but instead having their
backups live entirely on the Data Domain storage with one month retention.
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