In this post we look at how to protect one of the most widely used application servers in large enterprises, Oracle Weblogic, backing it up with Veeam Backup & Replication while following the best practice recommended by Oracle.
As always, we should start with the official Oracle Weblogic documentation, where we’ll find the best practices and recommended options for backing up Oracle Weblogic-specific data:
https://docs.oracle.com/en/middleware/standalone/weblogic-server/14.1.1.0/index.html
After reading through the documentation, we know there are two types of backup, along with the protection of specific Oracle Weblogic folders:
- Offline Backup
- Online Backup
And where the installation calls for it, you also need to include the “Backup Artifacts”, which are simply additional operating system configuration folders.
Backup with Veeam Backup & Replication#
Backing up Oracle Weblogic with Veeam Backup & Replication is very straightforward, because whether the machine is physical or virtual, the backup method will be via Snapshot (using the default options), which captures every file needed to recover Oracle Weblogic in the event of a problem with the application server.
Now, as always, backups have to be run the way the official documentation prescribes, so we’ll go over the file and folder paths that must be backed up for a successful recovery, whether granular or using the powerful capabilities of Veeam Backup & Replication.
As we saw earlier, there are two types of backup, Offline and Online. As the name suggests, an Offline backup requires shutting down all Oracle Weblogic services, then backing up the Backup Artifacts (the relevant files and folders), and finally bringing the services back up. These days, unless it’s strictly necessary, this probably isn’t the best option, because it means service downtime, and that’s simply unacceptable nowadays, isn’t it?
That’s why we’ll focus on the Online backup, which is the better option and incurs no Oracle Weblogic service downtime. As the official documentation notes, we must make sure that no configuration changes occur while the backup is running, so that it stays consistent.
And of course, recovery is based on the Weblogic configuration files, via Instant VM Recovery or whichever Veeam Backup & Replication mechanism you need.