Oracle APM duplication fails (80066)

Date - 11/2007
Affected Product & Version - NetVault: Backup 7.4.x
Affected Module & Version - APM for Oracle (Any Version)
OS Version - Any
Application Information - Oracle 9.x & 10.x


Description:
Instructions for resolving Oracle APM duplication problems.

Symptoms:
Oracle RMAN backups with duplication fail to complete the duplication phase, usually using too many different tapes and ending up in a "waiting for media" state while there is plenty of free space on the available targeted tapes.

To resolve this issue the duplication phase needs to be disabled and a new data copy job set up for each Oracle Backup. For each job take the following actions.


Original Job:
1) Edit the backup job to disable the duplication phase.

2) Make sure that the backup selection set has a unique saved name (i.e. "save as" on the backup selection set)

3) In the advanced options, select "Use Post script" and enter the name of a batch file in here.


Creating the batch job
1) In the ~NetVault/scripts/ directory on the NetVault Server create the script run2.bat with the following contents:

"%NV_HOME%\bin\nvtrigger" -server NV_SERVER_NAME TRIGGER_NAME

Where NV_SERVER_NAME is the NetVault Server name and TRIGGER_NAME is a new unique name for a trigger.


New Data Copy job
1) Create a new backup job, browse the NetVault server and select the data copy module

2) Expand the "Backup Sets" element, then select the server on which the main backup job has been run

3) Expand the server, then select the relevant module (i.e. Oracle APM or Oracle RMAN).

4) Select the backup set specified in the first job.

5) On the "Backup Options" Tab, make sure that the Copy Type is set to
"Duplicate a Backup"
and
"Use a set's most recent job regardless of type"
This ensures that this process works for both full and incremental backups.

6) On the Schedule Tab of the Data Copy job, select "Triggered" and enter the unique TRIGGER_NAME entered in the batch file.

The Data Copy job will then be triggered after each original job and will emulate the duplication functionality.


Discussion
This issue is related to an outstanding problem with the duplication module. It is not limited to Oracle RMAN backups, it can affect any backup which uses multiple segments, e.g. Informix or NDMP. What is happening here is that the duplication module mistakenly requests a new media for each segment of the backup, resulting in too much tape being written too and eventually no further tapes being available.


English version available ID: 3197
Version française disponible ID
Deutsche Version verfügbar ID