Oracle Server database backup and restore requirements

Review the Oracle database backup and restore requirements for IBM Spectrum® Protect Plus.

To help ensure that backup and restore operations can be run successfully, your system must meet the hardware and software requirements. Use the following requirements as a starting point. For the most current requirements, which might include updates, see technote 304861.

Configuration

Application versions

Table 1. Coverage matrix for application levels supported by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus	Oracle 18c* Enterprise Edition	Oracle 19c* Enterprise Edition
V10.1.1	--	--
V10.1.2	--	--
V10.1.3		--
V10.1.4		--
V10.1.5
V10.1.6
* The base release and later maintenance and modification levels are supported.

Tip: For multitenant databases in Oracle 12c and later, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus supports protection and recovery of the container database, including all pluggable databases (PDBs) under it. Granular recovery of specific PDBs can be performed by using an Instant Disk Restore recovery operation combined with the Recovery Manager (RMAN).

Operating systems

Table 2. Coverage matrix for supported operating systems on IBM PowerPC
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus	IBM AIX® 6.1 TL9*	IBM AIX 7.1*
V10.1.1
V10.1.2
V10.1.3
V10.1.4
V10.1.5
V10.1.6
* The base release and later maintenance and modification levels are supported.

Table 3. Coverage matrix for supported operating systems on Linux® x86_64
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus	RHEL 8.0*	CentOS 8.0*	SLES 15.0*
V10.1.1	--	--	--
V10.1.2	--	--	--
V10.1.3	--	--	--
V10.1.4	--	--
V10.1.5	--	--
V10.1.6
* The base release and later maintenance and modification levels are supported.

Restrictions

Oracle DataGuard is not supported.
Databases must be in ARCHIVELOG mode. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cannot protect databases running in NOARCHIVELOG mode.
Real Application Cluster (RAC) database recovery operations are not server pool-aware. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus can recover databases to an RAC, but not to specific server pools.
RAC databases must be configured such that the RMAN Snapshot Control File location points to shared storage that is accessible to all cluster instances.
When restoring an Oracle database that was configured for multithreading at the time of backup, the restored database is non-multithreaded. The restored database must be manually reconfigured to use multi-threading.
Point-in-time recovery is not supported when one or more data files are added to the database in the period between the chosen point-in-time and the time that the preceding backup job ran.

Network File System (NFS)

The Oracle server must have the native Linux or AIX NFS client installed. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus uses NFS to mount storage volumes for backup and restore operations.

For database restore operations, the Oracle Direct NFS feature is required. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus automatically enables Direct NFS if it is not already enabled.

For Direct NFS to work correctly, the executable oracle_home/bin/oradism in each Oracle home directory must be owned by the root user and have setuid privileges. Typically, the binary is preconfigured by the Oracle installer, but on certain systems, this binary might not have the required privileges. Run the following commands to set the correct privileges:

```
chown root:oinstall oracle_home/bin/oradism
```
where oinstall specifies the group that owns the installation, and orace_home specifies the Oracle home directory.
```
chmod 750 oracle_home/bin/oradism
```

Database discovery

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus discovers Oracle installations and databases by searching the /etc/oraInst.loc and /etc/oratab files and the list of running Oracle processes. If the files are not present in their default location, the locate utility must be installed on the system so that IBM Spectrum Protect Plus can search for the files.

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus discovers databases and their storage layouts by connecting to running instances and querying the locations of their data files, log files, and other files. In order for IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to correctly discover databases during cataloging and copy operations, databases must be in MOUNTED, READ ONLY, or READ/WRITE mode. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cannot discover or protect database instances that are shut down.

Block change tracking

IBM Spectrum Protect Plus requires Oracle block change tracking to be enabled on protected databases to efficiently perform incremental backups. If block change tracking is not already enabled, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus enables it automatically during the backup job.

To customize the placement of the block change tracking file, you must manually enable the block change tracking feature before you run an associated backup job. If the feature is enabled automatically by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus, the following rules are used to determine the placement of the block change tracking file:

If the db_create_file_dest parameter is set, the block change tracking file is created in the location specified by this parameter.
If the db_create_file_dest parameter is not set, the block change tracking file is created in the same directory as the SYSTEM table space.

Software

The bash and sudo packages must be installed. The sudo package must be version 1.7.6p2 or later. Run sudo -V to check the version.
Tip: The required bash and sudo packages are included in the supported Linux86_64 operating systems.
Install the most recent Oracle Server patches and updates in your environment.
Ensure that a supported version of Linux x86_64 or Linux on Power® Systems (little endian) is installed. Ensure that the most recent patches and updates are installed.
The International Components for Unicode (libicu) rpm-package must be installed for the corresponding version of your operating system.
Ensure that the effective file size ulimit -f for the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user and the Oracle instance user is set to unlimited. Alternatively, set the value to a sufficiently high value to allow copying of the largest database files in your backup and restore jobs. If you change the ulimit setting, restart the Oracle instance to finalize the configuration.
In a Linux environment, depending on your version or distribution, ensure that the Linux utility package util-linux-ng or util-linux package is current.
For Red Hat® Enterprise Linux and CentOS 6 users: To ensure that the util-linux-ng or util-linux package is current, run the following command:
```
yum update package_name
```

Authentication and privileges

Authentication

The Oracle Server must be registered in IBM Spectrum Protect Plus by using an operating system user that exists on the Oracle Server. The user is then referred to as the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user.
Ensure that the password is correctly configured and that the user can log in without other prompts, such as prompts to reset the password.

Privileges

To use an Oracle Server, the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user must have the following permissions:

Privileges to run commands as root and as an Oracle software owner user (for example, oracle or grid) by using sudo. These privileges are required for tasks such as discovering storage layouts, mounting and unmounting disks, and managing databases and Automatic Storage Management (ASM).
- The sudoers configuration must allow the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user to run commands without a password.
- The !requiretty setting must be set.
- The ENV_KEEP setting must allow the ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID environment variables to be retained.
Privileges to read the Oracle inventory. These privileges are required for tasks such as discovering and collecting information about Oracle homes and databases.
To achieve these privileges, the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user must belong to the Oracle inventory group, typically named oinstall.

For information about creating a new user with the required privileges, see Sample configuration of an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user.

Sample configuration of an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user

The following commands are examples for creating and configuring an operating system user that IBM Spectrum Protect Plus uses to log in to the Oracle Server. The command syntax might vary depending on your operating system type and version.

Create the user that is designated as the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user:
```
useradd -m sppagent
```
Set a password:
```
passwd sppagent_password
```
If using key-based authentication, place the public key in the /home/sppagent/.ssh/authorized_keys directory, or the appropriate file depending on your sshd configuration, and ensure that the correct ownership and permissions are set. The commands are structured as shown in the following example:
```
chown -R sppagent:sppagent /home/sppagent/.ssh
chmod 700 /home/sppagent/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/sppagent/.ssh/authorized_keys
```
Add the user to the Oracle installation and to the operating system (OSDBA) group:
```
usermod -a -G oinstall,dba sppagent
```
If you plan to use ASM, also add the user to the OSASM group:
```
usermod -a -G asmadmin sppagent
```
Place the following lines at the end of the sudoers configuration file, typically /etc/sudoers. If the existing sudoers file is configured to import a configuration from another directory (for example, /etc/sudoers.d), you can also place the lines to a new file in that directory:
```
Defaults:sppagent !requiretty
Defaults:sppagent env_keep+="ORACLE_HOME"
Defaults:sppagent env_keep+="ORACLE_SID"
sppagent ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
```

Prerequisites and operations

Prerequisites

Ensure that the Software, Connectivity, and Authentication and privileges requirements are met.

Operations

Before you start a backup or restore operation:

Before an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus user can implement backup and restore operations, roles and resource groups must be assigned to the user. Grant users access to resources and roles and resources by using the Accounts pane. For more information, see Managing user access.
Register the providers that you want to back up. For more information, see Adding an Oracle application server.
Configure a service level agreement (SLA) policy. For more information, see Create backup policies.

Review the following information about creating backup and restore jobs:

To ensure that file system permissions are retained correctly when IBM Spectrum Protect Plus moves Oracle data between servers, ensure that the user and group IDs of the Oracle users (for example, oracle, oinstall, dba) are consistent across all the servers. For information about uid and gid values, see the Oracle Database documentation.
If an Oracle inventory job runs at the same time or shortly after an Oracle backup job, copy errors might occur because of temporary mounts that are created during the backup job. To avoid this issue, schedule Oracle inventory jobs so that they do not overlap with Oracle backup jobs.
Avoid configuring log backup for a single Oracle Database by using multiple backup jobs. If a single Oracle Database is added to multiple job definitions with log backup enabled, a log backup from one job might truncate a log before it is backed up by the next job. This behavior might cause point-in-time restore jobs to fail.
Use a backup job to back up Oracle environments with snapshots, as described in Backing up Oracle data.
Use a restore job to restore an Oracle environment from snapshots. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus creates a vSnap clone from the version that is selected during the job definition and creates an NFS share. The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent then mounts the share on the Oracle Server where the restore job is to be run. For Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), the restore job is run on all nodes in the cluster, as described in Restoring Oracle data.
When restoring data from an IBM Spectrum Protect archive, files are initially migrated from tape storage to a staging pool. Depending on the size of the files to be restored, this process might take several hours.
If an Oracle Database is mounted but not opened during a backup job, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cannot determine the database tempfile settings that are related to autoextensibility and maximum size. When a database is restored from this restore point, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus cannot re-create the tempfiles with the original settings because they are unknown. Instead, tempfiles are created with the default settings: AUTOEXTEND ON and MAXSIZE 32767M. After the restore job is completed, you can manually update the settings.

Log backup

The cron daemon must be enabled on the application server.
The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user must have the necessary privileges to use the crontab command and create cron jobs. Privileges can be granted through the cron.allow configuration file.

Connectivity

Ensure that the following connectivity requirements are met:

The secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) subsystem for Secure Shell (SSH) is enabled.
The SSH service must be running on port 22 on the proxy host server.
Firewalls are configured to allow IBM Spectrum Protect Plus to connect to the proxy host server by using SSH.
IBM Spectrum Protect Plus uses the Network File System (NFS) protocol to mount storage volumes for backup and restore operations. Ensure that the native Linux NFS client is installed on the proxy host server.
All servers, proxies, applications, and hypervisors that are added to the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus environment must be registered by using a Domain Name System (DNS) name or Internet Protocol (IP) address.
If DNS names are used, they must be resolvable by the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance server and from the vSnap server. All IBM Spectrum Protect Plus components must also be resolvable by their DNS names..
If DNS is not available, you must add the server to the /etc/hosts file on the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance by using the command line.
Oracle RAC nodes are registered by their physical IP or name. Do not use a virtual name or Single Client Access Name (SCAN).

Ports

The following ports are used by IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent users.

Table 4. Communication ports when the target is an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent
Port	Protocol	Initiator	Target	Description
22	Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)	IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance¹	Oracle Server	Provides access to troubleshoot and maintain remote proxy host servers running guest applications components by using the SSH protocol
¹ The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance contains the base components: the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server, the vSnap server, and a VADP proxy, as described in Product components.

Table 5. Communication ports when the initiator is an IBM Spectrum Protect Plus agent user
Port	Protocol	Initiator	Target	Description
111	TCP	Oracle Server	vSnap server	Allows Open Network Computing (ONC) clients to discover ports for communications with ONC servers
443	TCP	Oracle Server	IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance¹	Port that allows the agent to communicate with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus for sending alerts in case of log backup failures
2049	TCP	Oracle Server	vSnap server	Used for NFS data transfer to and from vSnap servers
20048	TCP	Oracle Server	vSnap server	Mounts vSnap file systems on clients such as the VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP) proxy, application servers, and virtualization data stores
¹ The IBM Spectrum Protect Plus virtual appliance contains the base components: the IBM Spectrum Protect Plus server, the vSnap server, and a VADP proxy, as described in Product components.

Hardware

Table 6. Minimum hardware requirements
System	Disk Space
Compatible hardware that is supported by the operating system and Oracle Server	A minimum of 500 MB of disk space for the product to be installed