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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