If your company is using DellEMC Data Domain appliance to backup your databases, you are probably familiar with DD Boost technology. DD Boost increases backup speed while decreasing network bandwidth utilization.  In the case of Oracle, it has a plugin that integrates directly into RMAN. RMAN backs up via the DD Boost plugin to the Data Domain. It is the fastest and most efficient method to backup Oracle databases. 

However, some database administrators are still more comfortable with performing cold backups.  These backups are usually dumped to the Data Domain via NFS mount.   This is not the most efficient way to backup large databases as they are not deduplicated before sending to the network, thus consuming a lot of bandwidth.

Luckily, DellEMC created the product BoostFS (Data Domain Boost Filesystem) which provides a general file-system interface to the DD Boost library, allowing standard backup applications to take advantage of DD Boost features.   In the case of database cold backup, instead of using NFS to mount the Data Domain, you can use BoostFS to stream the cold backups to the Data Domain, thus increasing backup speed and decreasing network bandwidth utilization. In addition, you can also take advantage of its load-balancing feature as well as in-flight encryption.

To implement BoostFS, follow these steps:

1. DDBoostFS is dependent on FUSE.  So before installing DDBoostFS, install fuse and fuse-libs first.

2. Edit the configuration file /opt/emc/boostfs/etc/boostfs.conf, specifying the Data Domain hostname, DD storage-unit, username, security option, and if you want to allow users other than the owner of the mount to access the mount.  This is useful if you are using the same storage-unit for multiple machines.

3. Create the lockbox file, if you specified lockbox as the security option.  This is the most popular choice.

4. Verify host has access to storage using command /opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs lockbox show-hosts

5. Mount the new boostfs storage unit using command /opt/emc/boostfs/bin/boostfs mount

6. To retain the mount after reboots, add the boostfs entry on /etc/fstab

For more information, visit the DellEMC support site.