Experiences with Teradata Backup and Veeam?


Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Hello,
a customer of mine wants to use a teradata box for a database application.

Up to now I have learned already that there is no direct integration with Veeam and that teradata is a little bit “special”. It brings a own data protection solution with it on board. We don’t want to support and maintain a second backup solution besides Veeam for this customer if it is avoidable….

Does someone here have some experiences with data protection of a teradata box?
My fist idea was to check if the OS is a linux/unix and if it is possible to install a Veeam agent on it. I assume the internal solution can write the backup data in a filesystem and the agent can send it to the VBR server.

But perhaps there are some other solutions I didn’t think of. I am looking forward to hear your expertise :sunglasses:

 


8 comments

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Noone has some experiences with teradata?

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Hi @JMeixner 

 

Haven’t used it myself but here’s my notes:

  • It’s based on SLES 11 SP3 according to this document. https://docs.teradata.com/r/aqQyOunLDq9WDEXrrpz7Rw/mj4uS3ZH4RubmhAyrXE0bw so it’s no longer supported by Veeam Agent 5 due to SLES 11 SP3 being EOL and VMware only support it as part of legacy support, so it’d be worth the conversation with Teradata to check if this document is up o date and if so what the longer term support plans are, if they’re not upgrading, you’ll end up in a difficult support scenario with Veeam and be best letting them manage this natively instead…
  • There’s an express edition you could play about with to get a feel for this before committing to support it: https://downloads.teradata.com/download/database/teradata-express-for-vmware-player
  • Due to the distributed architecture approach you’ll have considerations as to whether you backup nodes or redeploy in a DR situation, at least it’s possible to redeploy nodes so this could save on licensing/backup storage requirements as it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to integrate with: https://docs.teradata.com/r/O9viMLZzlHKPL6m6CksAQw/WtEJJv0WCwIP~_afq5RAJg
  • It closely conforms to standard SQL syntax so if you need to interact with the database as part of the scripting process for backup & restore you’ll at least not have to learn a whole new language!

 

Let us know how you get on!

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Thank you @MicoolPaul ,
the express version is an interesting finding. Did not see this before. I will try it out to get a feeling for it.

Theproject wants is to backup the database. So, I thought into the same direction. Using tje Veeam agent with some scripts for the database…

I have an appointment with the project team next week. Your suggestions will help in my argumentation 😎👍🏼

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Thank you @MicoolPaul ,
the express version is an interesting finding. Did not see this before. I will try it out to get a feeling for it.

Theproject wants is to backup the database. So, I thought into the same direction. Using tje Veeam agent with some scripts for the database…

I have an appointment with the project team next week. Your suggestions will help in my argumentation 😎👍🏼

Hopefully it’s been of some value 😁 be cool to see what you achieve with this, if you end up making scripts for this would be good to get them on the VeeamHub GitHub! Hopefully they say that the OS is at least SUSE 11 SP4 or you’ll get no Veeam Agent support. I looked as far back as Veeam Agent for Linux v3 (thinking it could be managed by a Veeam v10 deployment whilst Veeam are still supporting that…) but even that is SUSE 11 SP4 onwards… so if this is a physical deployment you’re in unsupported territory without an OS upgrade!

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Yes, SLES 11 SP3 is rather old.

I hope they are on another OS level in the meantime. You don't get much definitive information about these systems. So , I hope that this meeting next week will get me some hard facts… 😎

😁😁😁 Very much hoping in this….

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

So, first insights with this are:

  • the actual Teradata boxes are at SLES 12 level. So, the OS is supported by Veeam Agent.
  • Teradata does not allow to install any software besides their own on these boxes. The exception from this rule is either a NetBackup or a Spectrum Protect client. These two products are tested and verified by Teradata.

I will keep you informed how this proceeds further on…. 😎

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

So, first insights with this are:

  • the actual Teradata boxes are at SLES 12 level. So, the OS is supported by Veeam Agent.
  • Teradata does not allow to install any software besides their own on these boxes. The exception from this rule is either a NetBackup or a Spectrum Protect client. These two products are tested and verified by Teradata.

I will keep you informed how this proceeds further on…. 😎

Thanks for sharing :relaxed: hopefully the customer will see the restrictions on this and acknowledge they’re backing themselves into a corner if they proceed.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Teradata has its own data protection on board. Data stream architecture (DSA).

As far as I know it up to now it would be very imaginable to have something like the Veeam Plugin for RMAN or SAP for this where the data stream is directed into…

We will see… Veeam surprised us several times in the past years. :sunglasses:

Comment