A Quick Update on how PowerProtect Data Manager Discovers Oracle Databases
Wed, 30 Nov 2022 23:09:59 -0000
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There’s a new Oracle database discovery method introduced in PowerProtect Data Manager version 19.9!
Dell EMC PowerProtect Data Manager provides software defined data protection, automated discovery, deduplication, operational agility, self-service, and IT governance for physical, virtual, and cloud environments. PowerProtect Data Manager helps you to:
- Orchestrate protection directly through an intuitive interface or empower data owners to perform self-service backup and restore operations from their native applications
- Enjoy unique VMware protection: Protect VMware VMs without business disruption
- Ensure compliance and meet even the strictest service level objectives
- Leverage your existing Dell EMC PowerProtect appliances
PowerProtect Data Manager gives you valuable insight into protected on-premises and in-cloud workloads, applications, file systems, and virtual machines. Designed with operational simplicity and agility in mind, PowerProtect Data Manager enables protecting traditional workloads, such as Oracle, Exchange, SQL, SAP HANA, and file systems, as well as Kubernetes containers and virtual environments.
PowerProtect Data Manager supports discovering Oracle databases through either the traditional /etc/oratab file located on the Oracle server or starting in PPDM 19.9, by using Oracle PMON (Process MONitor) processes. Let’s review these two methods.
Method 1:
PowerProtect Data Manager uses the /etc/oratab file to discover Oracle databases. Note that since the appearance of Oracle release 12.2, Oracle no longer updates the /etc/oratab file with information such as ORACLE_HOME and ORACLE_SID automatically. Administrators can still update the /etc/oratab file manually to continue using this discovery method.
Here’s an example of an /etc/oratab file with entries for a database called “oradb105”.
Method 2:
PowerProtect Data Manager 19.9 introduces a new mechanism for discovering Oracle databases. This method uses information contained in the Oracle PMON processes and doesn’t have dependencies on /etc/oratab entries. PMON is an Oracle background process created when a database instance is started.
Here’s an example of a PMON process for the same database mentioned earlier:
The PMON process contains the name of the database. The PowerProtect Data Manager discovery job will look for those PMON processes and add the database to the asset list (as in the following figure).
In conclusion, PowerProtect Data Manager no longer requires entries in the /etc/oratab to discover Oracle databases. Those entries will continue to have the highest precedence, but it will also look for Oracle PMON processes to gather the full list of assets.
I urge you to check out this interactive demo of PowerProtect Data Manager 19.9.
For more information, see the whitepaper PowerProtect Data Manager: Oracle® RMAN Agent Backup and Recovery that provides details about the Oracle RMAN agent architecture and the backup and restore workflow.
Author: Frank Gagnon