Avamar: Best Practices for Backing up Databases (Oracle, SQL, DB2, and so forth) on VMs using Avamar

Goals:

• Understand the difference between unstructured and structured data in a guest VM.
• Know which database backups can be successfully recovered.
• Understand best practices for protecting a database environment against accidental or intentional corruption or deletion.

Facts:

• Supported Avamar software versions
• Supported database platforms (Oracle, Microsoft SQL, SAP, and so forth)

Solution:
From backup and recovery perspective, there are essentially two types of data that reside on user systems:

• Unstructured Data consisting of files and folders such as:

  C:\backups\backupfile.bkp
  or
  D:\data\datafile.csv
  

• Structured Data that is organized by an application or database platform such as Microsoft SQL, SharePoint, Exchange, Oracle, and so forth

When you know what kind of data users are working with, you can provide a custom-tailored solution to their backup question.

Backup and recovery solutions can backup unstructured data using snapshot technologies on a guest VM (for example, VMware snapshots) or using an agent software running on the guest VM. This is true not only for Dell backup and recovery products but those from other vendors (Veritas, IBM, CommVault, and so forth) as well.

Snapshot-based backups work well for backing up unstructured data because the nature of the data is static unless it is being updated using a save or write operation.  

Structured data, however, requires a different approach from a backup perspective due to the way the data is laid out and because that data is constantly changing. Since the underlying database platform has control over the data, we cannot merely tell VMware to snapshot a VM because VMware's snapshot technology cannot put the database into a state where it can be backed up for later (successful) recovery. 

Steps:
Best practices for protecting a database environment running in a guest VM: 

1. Installation and configuration of the Avamar agent software on each VM in the database environment.
2. Consultation with database administrators (DBAs) to determine whether the database is:
   • Backed up by the DBAs and exported to "flat files" (such as D:\backups\databasefile1.bkp, D:\backups\databasefile2.bkp, and so forth) 

• The agent software is configured to "reach in" to the database platform and request the database to put the database into a state where Avamar can then back the data up reliably.

3. Electing NOT to rely on VMware snapshot technology for protecting the database layer.