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FlashGrid Cluster on GCP. Backup Best Practices

  • Updated
  • Products: FlashGrid Cluster on GCP

This article covers backup procedures that must be used for different types of data including:

  • OS and software on the cluster nodes
  • Database files
  • Files on ACFS, if used

Backing up OS and software on the cluster nodes

It is strongly recommended to back up the OS disk and software disk (lvmdisk1) of all cluster nodes after the initial cluster configuration and before and after applying any changes, such as patch installation or security settings changes. Taking disk snapshots is the recommended method for backing up the disks.

To create a backup of a cluster node VM

  1. If the node is a database node, stop Oracle services.
# crsctl stop crs
  1. Gracefully stop the instance.
# flashgrid-node poweroff

  1. Create snapshot of the OS disk.

  2. Create snapshot of the software disk (lvmdisk1).

Backing up database files

Standard RMAN procedures should be used for backing up and restoring database files.

Configuring a disk attached to one of the database node VMs for database backup

  • This option allows higher performance of the backups and does not consume network bandwidth
  • The disk must be formatted with a local file system, such as XFS
  • Disk snapshots can be used for exporting backup data to external locations (Make sure that RMAN backup is complete before you make snapshot of the backup disk.)
  1. Create disk.
gcloud compute disks create mycluster-uniqid-localbkp --size 40 --type pd-ssd
  1. Attach it to the VM.
gcloud compute instances attach-disk mycluster-uniqid-rac1 --disk=mycluster-uniqid-rac1-localbkp --device-name=localbkp
  1. Format the disk.
mkfs.xfs /dev/localbkp
  1. Create mount point with the appropiate permissions
mkdir /localbkp
chown oracle:oinstall /localbkp
chmod 755 /localbkp
  1. Mount the filesystem
mount -o discard,defaults /dev/localbkp /localbkp

If you want the filesystem automatically mounted after reboot, then

echo UUID=`sudo blkid -s UUID -o value /dev/localbkp` /localbkp xfs defaults,nofail 0 2 | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Backing up Grid Infrastructure configuration files

Please follow Grid Infrastructure Backup and Restore Best Practices

Backing up files on ACFS

For backing up and restoring files on ACFS use same tools and procedures that you would normally use for file-level backup and restore.