Reviewing a Case Where Veeam Backup Failed – Root Cause, Fixes & Prevention Tips
Introduction
Last Friday, a reporting database deployed on a virtualization platform experienced a service interruption because the underlying storage volume ran out of space, making the disk unwritable and unreadable. Since storage space couldn’t be freed up quickly, we decided to use Veeam Backup to rapidly restore a new database to resume business access as soon as possible.
However, during the database restoration using Veeam, I encountered an unexpected issue. This article will review the entire process and share relevant insights.
Case Overview – What Happened?
First, I confirmed that the daily backup tasks for the reporting database all showed as successful. Based on the backup status, the restore operation should have proceeded smoothly.
Next, I followed Veeam’s standard restoration procedure: creating a virtual machine, installing Oracle software, and deploying the Veeam Agent. Once everything was ready, I launched Veeam Explorer for Oracle to perform the database restore. But then an error appeared:
Cannot find autobackup files for the selected database on the backup repository. Make sure database backup is created with the latest available plug-in version and enable controlfile autobackup on the source server to prevent this error in future.
This error was surprising—if the backup tasks showed success every day, why couldn’t the restore proceed?
According to the error prompt, the backup set did not contain a backup of the control file. Veeam indicated that we should check whether the source database had the control file autobackup feature enabled in RMAN with the following configuration:
RMAN> show controlfile autobackup;
RMAN configuration parameters for database with db_unique_name RTP are:
CONFIGURE CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP OFF;
If this option wasn’t enabled, Veeam would not back up the control file by default. We later confirmed this in the backup directory:
root@veeamrepo01:/backupdata/backups/VeeamPluginUser_LinRman_42101602-3240-f20c-a1c7-1e9946f37a8e# ll c-*
ls: cannot access 'c-*': No such file or directory
The control file is critical for Oracle database recovery. Without it, restoration is impossible. To make matters worse, the original host where the reporting database resided couldn’t start due to storage issues—we were stuck!
Fortunately, the virtualization team promptly freed up some storage space, allowing the original host to reboot and the database to return to normal. I immediately enabled RMAN’s CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP configuration, restarted a database backup task in Veeam, and after the backup completed, checked whether the control file existed in the backup directory:
root@veeamrepo01:/backupdata/backups/VeeamPluginUser_LinRman_42101602-3240-f20c-a1c7-1e9946f37a8e/sqrptbak_rtpdb# ll c-*
-rw-r--r-- 1 veeamrepo veeamrepo 2248704 Nov 21 11:23 c-1857153753-20251121-00.vab
-rw-r--r-- 1 veeamrepo veeamrepo 17912 Nov 21 11:23 c-1857153753-20251121-00.vasmAlthough the issue was resolved, this incident highlighted an important problem: when Veeam backs up an Oracle database, its ability to back up the control file depends on RMAN’s CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP configuration. This dependency wasn’t clearly highlighted during the Veeam backup task deployment, which can be misleading.
Afterward, I reviewed Veeam’s official documentation and found that it does include relevant information:
Therefore, I strongly recommend that teams using Veeam to back up Oracle databases promptly check whether the RMAN controlfile autobackup option is enabled on the source database. This ensures the backup set includes the control file and avoids complications during restoration.
Conclusions
This incident served as a wake-up call and offers the following takeaways and recommendations:
1. Backup validation is essential: A backup task showing "success" doesn’t guarantee the backup set is complete or usable. Regularly performing recovery drills is key to verifying backup validity.
2. Understand backup mechanism dependencies: When Veeam backs up Oracle databases, control file backup relies on RMAN’s CONTROLFILE AUTOBACKUP configuration. Be sure to enable this option on the source database to ensure the control file is included in the backup set.
3. Improve deployment and verification processes: When deploying Veeam backup tasks, clearly identify such dependency configurations and include them in initial checklists to avoid unusable backups due to configuration oversights.
4. Establish emergency communication protocols: During issues with underlying infrastructure like storage, timely communication and collaboration with relevant teams can buy more time and options for recovery.
Hope this experience sharing helps everyone better avoid similar risks in daily operations and ensures the reliability of database backup and recovery processes.
Related reading: Veeam Security Deep Dive – Malware & Ransomware Defense