What is FCM (FlashCopy Manager) backup?

Tivoli FlashCopy Manager (FCM)

Unlike other solutions on the market, FCM offers an application-aware backup and restore function by leveraging advanced snapshot technologies.

1. FCM performs near-instant application-aware snapshot backups, with little or no impact to the Oracle database.
2. FCM improves application availability and service levels through high-performance and nearinstant restore capabilities that reduce downtime.
3. FCM integrates with Storwize V7000.

A snapshot copy of the production data is retained on disk as an application backup and can be later used to restore the production data. FCM allows users to restore on an auxiliary server or to clone the production server for development or testing purposes.

FCM components

The FCM components are divided into three groups: Application Agent, Management daemon and Device Agent (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Three FCM component groups

Application Agent provides required support to implement snapshot backup and restore. For Oracle native databases (non SAP), the client functions are integrated in the acsora application agent.
Management daemon (acsd) coordinates the backup operation. It controls the backup flow and mediates between the application and device agents. The management agent also provides access to the snapshot-backup repository, which contains information about the valid snapshot backups and their relationship to snapshot -capable storage devices.

Offload Agent (tsm4acs) has the role of providing a single user interface for backing up an existing snapshot to Tivoli Storage Manager. Tivoli FlashCopy Manager includes a licensefile that enables use of the enhanced functions of the offload agent. The offload agent also calls the generic-device agent for mount and unmount operations on the backup systems.

Volume Group Takeover utility (acsvg.sh) is a shell script that is only required in special
high-availability scenarios where enhanced concurrent-capable volume groups are used on
production systems. In these situations, this script exports and reimports the volume groups
on an IBM PowerHA™ (formerly called HACMP™) takeover system after a snapshot restore
is performed. This process is necessary to synchronize the AIX Object Data Manager (ODM) on the production and IBM PowerHA takeover systems.

Device Agent (acsgen) is an OS-independent and storage-device-independent software layer that interacts with OS -specific and storage device-specific adapters. This agent is also used to send and request updates of the progress and usability information stored in the local snapshot repository.

CIM Adapter (fmcima) is used in conjunction with the Generic Device Agent (acsgen) and is the component that invokes a snapshot command on a FlashCopy device (such as IBM
System Storage® DS8000 and SAN Volume Controller) using the CIM interface.

XIV Adapter (XivAdapter.jar) works in conjunction with the Generic Device Agent (acsgen) to communicate with acsgen. It issues commands to the IBM XIV® command-line interface (xcli).

Query Capacity (fmquery) command lists all backups (FlashCopy or snapshots) that are
registered in a particular repository. Use this command to periodically check the amount of
storage space used for backups and to verify compliance with the licensed-capacity amount.

Solution
For this paper, a backup and restore solution is built for a native Oracle database. The solution uses FCM2.2 to backup and restore an Oracle11g database, where the database and log files are located on SAN disks of the Storwize V7000 midrange-storage system in an AIX environment.
This paper also guides the reader through the creation of Storwize V7000 pools and volumes, the creation of LVM and ASM volume groups and file systems, the installation of FCM software and the steps for performing a backup and restore/clone of an Oracle database.

Note: The author assumes the readers have basic knowledge of AIX LVM, Oracle ASM and Oracle RMAN. For technical details on those topics, refer to the respective product documentation sets.

Storwize FlashCopy function
The IBM Storwize FlashCopy function offers an advanced storage technology that you can use to protect critical customer data and maximize data availability. With minimal impact on production during flash copying, it becomes the most favorable solution for backup and restore.

There are multiple types of FlashCopy: copy, incremental and nocopy.

1. Copy FlashCopy is a point-in-time copy of a volume, followed by a subsequent backgroundcopy operation that creates a physical copy of the source volume.
2. Incremental FlashCopy is similar to a copy FlashCopy but it reduces how much data is copied between consecutive FlashCopy backups. Only blocks that change after the previous FlashCopy are copied to the target.
3. Nocopy FlashCopy creates only the image that contains the changes that occur after the original FlashCopy (no background copying).

Storwize V7000 also allows FlashCopy to create snapshots on space-efficient volumes (Note: To avoid the volume size increasing because of background copying, it is recommended that you run the FlashCopy to a space-efficient target with the NOCOPY option.)

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