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"Too many open files" error during SAP on Oracle backup

KB ID: 3213
Product: Veeam Backup & Replication | 11
Published: 2021-03-01
Last Modified: 2021-03-02
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Challenge

The backup job performed by Veeam Plug-in for SAP on Oracle fails with the following error:
"Too many open files. Please increase the file descriptor limit. You may refer to the KB 3213 for more information"

Cause

The "Too many open files" error happens when a process needs to open more files than the operating system allows. The issue can occur if Veeam Plug-in for SAP on Oracle uses a lot of parallel channels to transfer data to Veeam backup repository while the file descriptor system limit on the database server is not high enough.

Solution

There are 2 workarounds:

  • You can decrease the number of used parallel channels by changing the plug-in configuration. To change the number of parallel channels, run the following command on the SAP on Oracle server:
SapOracleBackintConfigTool --set-parallelism n

where n is the number of required channels

  • Alternatively, you can increase the file descriptor limit on the SAP on Oracle server:
  1. Check the actual value by running the following command: ulimit -a
  2. Increase the value of the "fs.file-max" parameter in the /etc/sysctl.conf file. For example:
fs.file-max = 65536
  1. Edit the /etc/security/limits.conf parameters accordingly:
soft     nproc          65535
hard     nproc          65535
soft     nofile         65535
hard     nofile         65535
  1. Reboot the SAP on Oracle server.
  2. Check that the new limit is correctly applied by running the following command: ulimit -a

Before you apply this workaround, make sure that the descriptor limit change will not destabilize the system. It is recommended to create a backup of the entire system before increasing the file descriptor limit.

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