IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for UNIX and Linux, Version 4.1

Installation prerequisites for backup and clone servers

For hosts that are used as a backup server or clone server, the operating system version and maintenance level must be the same as the production server. For IBM® DB2® pureScale®, a host that is used as a backup server must have the same version of IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS™) and DB2 as the production server.

Backup server requirements

For the IBM Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy® Manager software to run correctly, the following settings are required on the backup server:

The user name and group name of the database instance owner or application owner on the production server must be available on the backup server. The same user ID (UID) and group ID (GID) must be used.
IBM DB2 and Oracle environment: A database instance with the same version as the database instance on the production server must be installed on the backup server.
Oracle in an SAP environment: An Oracle database instance is required when incremental backups that use Oracle RMAN are performed. SAP BR*Tools are optional on the backup server.
IBM DB2 pureScale: A GPFS cluster and a DB2 instance with the same topology and number of nodes as on the production server must be installed. However, the nodes are not required to be distributed across systems in the same way, but can be collocated. The backup cluster must be authorized to mount the production file system in read and write mode.

When Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager is used in an environment with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, a backup server is required. This backup server is used to offload the backup workload from the production server to the backup server and sends the application critical backups to Tivoli Storage Manager.

The following Tivoli Storage Manager Data Protection clients are used by Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager to initiate a subsequent backup to Tivoli Storage Manager and must be installed and configured on the backup server:

IBM DB2 Tivoli Storage Manager agent for DB2 environments. Use the agent that is associated with the DB2 instance.
DB2 Tivoli Storage Manager agent for IBM DB2 pureScale environments. Use the agent that is associated with the DB2 instance.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Enterprise Resource Planning agent is optional for DB2 in an SAP environment.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Databases agent for Oracle only environments.
Tivoli Storage Manager for ERP agent for Oracle in an SAP environment
Tivoli Storage Manager Backup-Archive client for custom application environments.

Update the Tivoli Storage Manager Data Protection client node password on the production server and all backup servers whenever it changes. When Tivoli Storage Manager is configured to use the PASSWORDACCESS GENERATE parameter, the password can change without notification. If the Tivoli Storage Manager Data Protection client is configured to use the PASSWORDACCESS GENERATE parameter, use the Tivoli Storage Manager proxy-node capability to avoid authentication errors when the password is reset. Create one data node on the Tivoli Storage Manager where all Data Protection clients from all backup and production servers are sending and retrieving data. Create one authentication node for each production server and backup server that is configured as proxy node to this data node.

Offload backups to Tivoli Storage Manager with Oracle RMAN

To offload incremental backups from an Oracle environment, Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager requires an Oracle database instance to be installed and configured on the backup server. The Oracle specific environment variables, for example ORACLE_HOME, and paths must be exported so that they are accessible if the su - oracle_user -c command is issued. This accessibility can be verified by running su - oracle_user -c env | grep ORACLE as root user. The Oracle recovery catalog database must exist and must be accessible from the production and backup server for the Oracle user ID. In this database, Oracle RMAN records all offloaded backups. For details on the setup of a recovery catalog database, see the Oracle manuals. To verify this setup, run the following command as the Oracle user on the production host:

rman target / catalog catalog_user/catalog_password@
	<catalog_connect_string>

To verify the setup of the backup system, run the following command as the root user on the backup host:

su -oracle user -c "rman target / catalog catalog_user/
	catalog_password@catalog_connect_string"

The command must be able to connect to both the target and the recovery catalog databases, and show the RMAN prompt. This operation can be finished with the quit command. For example:

$ rman target / catalog  rman/rman@catdb 
,
Recovery Manager: Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Mon Aug 5 13:59:53 2013

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

connected to target database: P01 (DBID=1213110920, not open)
connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN> quit


Recovery Manager complete.
$

Clone server requirements

For FlashCopy cloning, the database instances must be installed and configured on the clone server. Database cloning does not apply to IBM DB2 pureScale, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, or custom application environments.

Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager requires the following settings for cloning:

DB2 and DB2 in an SAP environment: Two database instances with the same version as the database instance on the production server are required to be installed on the clone server. One database instance is assigned the same name as the production instance on the production server and the other is assigned a clone instance name.; On the clone server, the database instance with the same name as production database instance must be assigned a user name and group name. The user name and group name must be the same names that are assigned to the database instance on the production server. The same user ID (UID) and group ID (GID) must be used. The user name, group name, UID, and GID for the clone instance must be different.
Oracle and Oracle in an SAP environment: A clone database instance with the same version and name as the database instance on the production server must be installed on the clone server.; The user name and group name of the clone database instance owner on the clone system must be available on the clone server. The user ID (UID) and group ID (GID) can be different from the UID and GID of the production server database instance.; For cloning in Oracle environments, the database SID cannot contain lowercase letters. If the SID contains lowercase letters, the clone database is created, but the lowercase letters in the SID of the clone system are converted to capitalized letters.
All supported applications: To archive database log files and transfer database backups to Tivoli Storage Manager, the Data Protection clients must be installed and configured on the clone server. The Tivoli Storage Manager Data Protection clients version on the clone server must be the same level as on the production server.

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