Just to understand the scenario: the Oracle LUNs are iSCSI-LUNs or are they files in a filesystem (NFS or CIFS). If that are LUNs from the backend Clariion the Celerra won't see them.

Since this is an appliance, is setting up a cron job allowed and does it break the support agreement with EMC? EMC said you couldn't set up the Celerra to automatically export file systems. When looking on the device, you don't see the standard setup for NFS exports. Showmount does not show anything.

If its NFS then one way would be to create the snap with a known name like backup and just tell you backup app to backup from .ckpt/backup

If its just the export that bothers you, you could just setup a cron job on the control station to try to export it a couple of times a day
I would be cleaner though to run it from a script on the Oracle database server that puts Oracle in hot backup mode, ssh's into Celerra to create the snapshot and exports it, starts the backup and then deletes the snapshot

you could also use NDMP - you just would have to figure out a way to synchronize snapshot creation and backup

Have a look at the white papers and technotes on Powerlink - I think there was one about Oracle snapshot and backups with Celerra

They are exported through NFS to the Linux hosts.

Running custom scripts on the Control Station does not break your maintenance agreement. Two things to keep in mind about custom scripting:

1. EMC does not support or maintain your scripts.
2. Make sure you know what your scripts are doing. You don't want your scripts to break anything either.



Celerra exports are done slightly differently, but rest assured, our NFS implementation follows the actual standard very closely. You may not see anything from a showmount perspective because you may not have permission to see anything. If you don't already have them, I would strongly suggest downloading the Celerra manuals and checking out the manual entitled "Configuring NFS on EMC Celerra." You can download the entire Documentation CD off of Powerlink. The browse path is:

Home > Support > Technical Documentation and Advisories > Hardware/Platforms Documentation > Celerra Network Server > General Reference

The Documentation CD is the third choice down in the menu, entitled "Celerra Network Server Documentation CD."

Thank you for your suggestions.

My real goal is to be able to run the snaps off to tape without having to export them to a host with a backup agent. I don't see where I can export the mounted snap. They don't do exports like you normally would on a Unix system. I thought NDMP would allow me a way to backup the file systems directly from the Celerra and send it to a tape library. Do you know if that's possible? Thanks in advance.

As I mentioned in my previous reply, while the mechanism for actually producing a NFS export is slightly different, it is an export that does follow the NFS standard.



You can indeed use Celerra in the way you are asking. Your backup agent would send control messages to the Data Mover over the network, and then the Data Mover would spool the filesystem off to a direct-attached tape library, no NFS exporting necessary. It can even use automatic Celerra snapshots, back them up, and delete them when it's finished. The same Celerra Network Server Documentation CD contains a manual entitled "Configuring NDMP Backups on EMC Celerra" which should help you get your backups set up correctly.

Can you tell me where the checkpoints are stored on the Celerra? What is the path?

I think they are just mounted with the name of the checkpoint

just create one and then do a server_mount

take a look at these two white papers attached - while they are about 11G and DNFS the backup method applies to any Oracle version

I order to backup directly from the Celerra using NDMP you would have to try if NDMP and your backup agent allows
you to specify a checkpoint as the file system to be backed.
Theoretically it should but it needs to be tested

There is also a NDMP with an integrated checkpoint - but that would be taken immediately before the backup starts and not synchronized with Oracle.