Greetings,
We have a 7.5.0.5 master on HP-UX IA64, and a two-node RAC cluster on linux with 7.5.0.5 agents. Backups have been configured based on "Failover VIP exists and backup is load balanced" in oracle admin guide. Each node has a bp.conf in the oracle owner home directory that specifies the VIP-name for that node for CLIENT_NAME. The RMAN script is customized to only start if NB_ORA_CLIENT is set to the SCAN name, and exit with 0 status otherwise. SCAN name and VIP names are listed in the policy used to start the backup. Script is stored on ACFS (cluster) filesystem to be available to both nodes. NB_ORA_PARENT_JOBID, NB_ORA_SID, and NB_ORA_SERV are passed via RMAN SEND. NB_ORA_CLIENT is picked up from ~oracle/bp.conf as expected.
Backups work as expected. Channels are balanced between nodes if both are available, or if only node one is available all channels are allocated to it.
Restore is somewhat confusing. I stopped the instance on both nodes, deleted some files from an empty tablespace using asmcmd, brought up one instance, and attempted a restore/recover, using "set autolocate" per the adminguide, with NO parameters passed via SEND or PARMS. altnames/No.Restrictions is in place. RMAN failed to restore pieces that were backed up on the second instance. Ok fine. Allocate two channels, one with NB_ORA_CLIENT=node1-vip, other with NB_ORA_CLIENT=node2-vip. Restore works great, rman picks the right channel (dunno how but OK).
I thought maybe I could get around the NB_ORA_CLIENT issue by following the steps on page 196 of the Netbackup7.5 for Oracle Admin Guide for "Virtual names and RAC catalog maintenance", but if I follow the steps there backups fail with error code 227. Verbose logging doesn't shed any light for my untrained eye.
Question: Is the procedure there obsolete with the changes in the catalog for 7.5? If so, is there another way (maybe involving bpclient -add_alias?).
Thanks,
Brad