It's best practice to regularly back up your operating system and database to restore the SAP system should the need arise. Hence, one of the chief responsibilities of an SAP Administrator and/or DBA/SysAdmin is to have an appropriate method for performing this set of duties, preferably through some automation.
SAP Backup Monitoring
The following are some of the factors to be considered when looking for the best method for system backup and restore:
- RTO and RPO policies
- System Availability/Disaster recovery approach
- Available budget
System backup is a routine task of a BASIS consultant and as such it requires adequate monitoring and administration. Manual checking of backups is insufficient due to possible human error, thus finding a way to automate the process and monitor its status should be the objective of any database administrator.
An appropriate database strategy must be in place to avoid the risk of data loss. Data might be lost or corrupted due to several reasons such as:
- Disks crash
- Power failure
- Human error
- Virus Damage
- Natural disasters
It is insufficient to simply schedule backups. You must also check regularly whether they were completed successfully or not as omitting such a check could have serious consequences on business operations.
Risks associated with data loss can be adequately mitigated by automating the monitoring of backup status and alerts in your system. This will eliminate the cost resulting from database damage and time wasted doing a manual check of backup status.
Traditional SAP Backup Monitoring
Backups can be monitored using Solution Manager.
SAP backups can be scheduled and viewed using DB13, DB12, DBACOCKPIT.
HANA customers can use HANA Studio's Backup Console and/or HANA Cockpit to initiate backups or schedule scripts provided by SAP and adapted to each system for backup. While the backup runs, it can be monitored inside Studio or via SQL scripts.
SAP on Oracle customers can use brtools for backup which is fully integrated into DB13 scheduler. Brtools can also help with the restoration process.
SAP provides backint (backup integration) for 3rd-party vendors (such as CommVault, HP DPM, Veeam, Azure Backup DPM, etc.) to integrate their data protection tools with SAP-supported database backups. So backups can be invoked using the standard SAP scheduler or with the vendor data protection scheduler. Either way, the backup, and archive log backups should be available to SAP in a standard format visible to CCMS.
Cron jobs are still widely used by customers who run SAP on Linux/UNIX, but this lacks central control and the ability to monitor.
Streamline SAP Backup Monitoring with IT-Conductor
IT-Conductor as the cloud-based agentless monitoring solution is designed to provide active monitoring of targeted backups, their status, performance, and correlation to other activities in the system.
Monitoring
IT-Conductor automates the process of checking your backup status thereby saving valuable administrative effort and time which can lead to the improvement of backup processes. Backup age (hours since last successful FULL, DIFFERENTIAL, INCREMENTAL) is default monitored for HANA databases, as well as backup-related HANA alerts.
An overview of completed and failed backups can be easily obtained using IT-Conductor and this helps you stay productive and efficient.
Custom integration with backup logs from different tools can check the backup status and alert accordingly.
Backup notifications are automated by IT-Conductor so you can stay on top of possible system issues.
IT-Conductor can help avoid a monotonous and mundane task that consumes valuable time that could be utilized in other areas of business. You get one central monitoring tool for all your backups and other system activities, so that if a resource bottleneck or event occurs during the backup window, it can be analyzed in a time-synchronized manner.
IT-Conductor backup monitoring solution saves costs and eliminates inefficiencies.
You have the choice of specifying how you want to be notified whether via email or push notification.
Scheduling
IT-Conductor can schedule SQL-based backups, Scripts-based backups, or API-based with 3rd-party DPM tools.
IT-Conductor can take care of dependency prior to backup, such as stopping resources and restarting them following a successful backup.
IT-Conductor can initiate a backup based on a monitor threshold, such as running a brarchive on Oracle to backup and delete offline archive logs when the oraarch destination filesystems exceed a utilization threshold.