Perform Lifecycle Management Activities for Disaster Recovery

Overview of Disaster Recovery

A disaster recovery (DR) configuration helps ensure business continuity in the case of outages, natural disasters, and other events that put your environments at risk. Disaster recovery minimizes downtime and data loss through backup solutions, redundancies, and failover mechanisms.

The disaster recovery feature is available for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 environments with Oracle Database 19c on Base Database Service DB Systems in select cloud realms. To determine if this feature is supported in your realm, see the table "Cloud Automation for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.2 with Oracle Database 23ai and 19c" in My Oracle Support Knowledge Document 2517025.1, Getting Started with Oracle E-Business Suite on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Note: The discovery and refresh capabilities are not supported with DR environments.

The following activities are covered in this chapter:

• Create a Disaster Recovery Environment for an Environment with the Database on Base Database Service DB System

• Perform a Switchover

• Perform a Failover

• Reinstate an Environment

• Delete a Disaster Recovery Environment

Create a Disaster Recovery Environment for an Environment with the Database on Base Database Service DB System

Follow the procedure below to create a disaster recovery environment.

Note: If you create a DR environment in a different region than the primary environment, ensure that you select the appropriate region in the header when reviewing environments in the Environments page.

Prerequisites

• Follow best practices in selecting appropriate regions geographically and with regard to FSS availability and FSS proximity between your data centers. For more information on FSS considerations, see File System Replication and Recommended Target Regions.
• Set up groups and policies for disaster recovery, including vault creation, described below. See: Create the Oracle E-Business Suite Administrators Group and Assign Policies.
• Create an OCI vault in the region and compartment where the DR environment will be. Also, create secrets for the five passwords you will need to provide, namely, those for: APPS, WebLogic Server, Database Admin, Wallet, and EBS_SYSTEM. Refer to the following documentation for more information:

• Creating a Vault

• Creating a Master Encryption Key

• Creating a Secret

• Follow the prerequisites for Data Guard association listed in Use Oracle Data Guard on a DB System.
• After setting up the additional network-related prerequisites described in Cross-Region Support and Disaster Recovery under Use a Custom Network, create a network profile in Oracle E-Business Suite Cloud Manager that describes the compartment and network mapping for the DR environment. See: Create a Network Profile.
• Apply Patch 37255489. This prerequisite must be done before running the script prepareSourceEnvToCreateDisasterRecoverySite.pl described below.
• Run the script prepareSourceEnvToCreateDisasterRecoverySite.pl on the OrchVM:

$ cd /u01/install/APPS/apps-unlimited-ebs/scripts/
$ sh /u01/install/APPS/apps-unlimited-ebs/setEnv.sh
$ perl prepareSourceEnvToCreateDisasterRecoverySite.pl

When prompted, enter the appropriate input values including passwords.

The screen will display the name of the log file for this session in the format prepareSourceEnvToCreateDisasterRecoverySite<Date_and_Time_Stamp>.out, as illustrated by this example:

Created log file: /u01/install/APPS/apps-unlimited-ebs/out/prepareSourceEnvToCreateDisasterRecoverySite20250515_140130.out

Review the log file to ensure that there are no errors.

Navigate to the Create Disaster Recovery Option

1. Navigate to the Environment Details page for your primary environment.

2. Select Create DR under the More Actions menu.

Enter Disaster Recovery Environment Details

1. Enter a name for the new environment.

2. The compartment is displayed and is read-only. It must be the same as the compartment of the primary environment.

3. Select a region. The region you select could be a cross-region; if you want to create the disaster recovery environment in the same region as the primary environment, it should be in a different availability domain.

4. Select a network profile. The list of network profiles is determined by the availability domain for the region chosen above.

5. Enter the credentials for the primary environment. Enter the following:

   • APPS password

   • WebLogic Server password

   • Database Admin password

   • TDE wallet password

   • EBS_SYSTEM password

6. Click Next. The passwords you entered will be validated.

Enter Database Tier Details

On the Database Tier Details page, the database name of the primary environment is displayed as read-only.

1. Select the License Type.

2. Select a Shape.

3. Select the Protection Mode.

   If you are creating a DR environment in the same region but different availability domains, there are two options, Maximum Performance and Maximum Availability. Refer to Oracle Data Guard Protection Modes for more information on protection modes. and Enable Data Guard on a DB System for more information.

   If you are creating a DR environment in a cross-region, the only option is Maximum Performance.

4. The Transport Type is displayed as read-only. For more information on transport type, see Enable Data Guard on a DB System.

5. Click Next.

Enter Application Tier Details

On the Application Tier Details page, you can edit only the web entry type for the defined zones. The other details for a zone should be the same as those of the primary environment.

If the primary environment has the application tier node configured as the web entry point, then the DR environment must also have the application tier node as the web entry point.

1. Select a zone from the table and in the Actions column, click Edit Zone.

2. A field for the Web Entry Type is shown. Options are:

   • New Load Balancer (LBaaS)

     If you choose this option, select a Load Balancer Shape. A new flexible load balancer with the bandwidth limit you select will be created. If you need to fine-tune the bandwidth or other properties of the new load balancer, create it directly on the OCI Console and select the re-use load balancer option.

   • Use OCI Load Balancer

     If you choose this option, select the OCI Load Balancer to use. A new listener with the port used in the primary environment will be defined in the selected load balancer. Only load balancers with that port available will be listed here.

   • Manually Configured Load Balancer

3. Click Save Zone to save your changes.

4. Note that the File System Type is displayed as read-only.

5. Click Next.

Review the Disaster Recovery Environment Details

1. Review the disaster recovery environment details, including:

   • General information, including environment name, compartment, region, and network profile.

   • Database tier details, including database name, license type, shape, protection mode, and transport type.

   • For application tier details, information on zones is shown. For each zone, its name, type, count of the application nodes, web entry type, and web entry URL is listed.

2. To create your DR environment, click Submit.

3. You can check the status of the job to provision the DR environment in the Jobs page. For more information, see: Monitor Job Status.

   A successfully-created environment is listed in the Environments page. Note that if you created a DR environment in a different region than the primary environment, you must ensure that you select the appropriate region in the Oracle E-Business Suite Cloud Manager header when reviewing them in the Environments page.

Perform a Switchover

A switchover allows you to perform a planned transition, or switch, of the roles of an active primary environment and an associated active DR environment. In a switchover, the primary environment becomes the DR environment and the DR environment becomes the primary environment.

For example, say you have planned maintenance activities to be done on primary Environment P that has a DR Environment D. You perform a switchover so that the Environment P becomes the DR environment and Environment D becomes the primary environment. Perform the planned maintenance activities on Environment P (currently the DR environment). Finally, perform another switchover so that Environment P is the primary environment and Environment D is the DR environment again.

A switchover is always initiated on the primary environment.

Prerequisites

• You must run the rsync command manually before performing a switchover. On every disaster recovery application node, run the script below as the oracle user:

/u01/install/APPS/scripts/setup_fpsync_apps_disaster_recovery.sh 

For shared multinode environments, run the above command on the primary node only.

Perform a Switchover

1. Navigate to the Environment Details page for the primary environment. See Review Environment Details (Standard) for more information.

2. Under More Actions, select Switchover.

3. For the Standby Name, select the name of the disaster recovery environment you wish to use in the switchover.

   You will then enter credentials for this environment.

4. Enter the APPS Password.

5. Enter the WebLogic Password.

6. Enter the Database Admin Password.

7. Enter the Wallet Password.

8. Enter the EBS_SYSTEM Password.

9. Click Switchover.

10. Once the switchover is successfully completed, the primary environment becomes the DR environment and the DR environment becomes the primary environment.

    The new DR environment is listed in the Environments page with the Last Job as switchover-disaster-recovery (Successful). For more information on jobs, see: Monitor Job Status.

Perform a Failover

In a failover, you perform an unplanned transition to the DR environment, and the DR environment becomes the primary environment.

For example, if the primary environment fails or becomes unreachable, you can use the failover feature to convert a DR environment into the primary environment.

Note that in this procedure, you utilize the OCI vault and passwords you created when you created the DR environment. See: Create a Disaster Recovery Environment for an Environment with the Database on Base Database Service DB System).

Perform a Failover

1. From the Environment Details page for the disaster recovery environment, click the Failover button. The Failover window appears.

2. Select the Vault Compartment.

3. Select the Vault.

4. Select the Secret Compartment.

5. Select the APPS Password Secret.

6. Select the WebLogic Password Secret.

7. Select the Database Admin Password Secret.

8. Select the Wallet Password Secret.

9. Select the EBS_SYSTEM Password Secret.

10. Click Failover.

11. Once the failover is completed, the DR environment becomes the primary environment. The former primary environment then has the environment role of DISABLED-STANDBY.

Reinstate an Environment

In the case of a failover event, your DR environment becomes the primary environment. The previous primary environment becomes a DR environment in a disabled role.

If you can correct the failures in the now-disabled environment, or if you can recover this inactive environment from a backup, you may choose to reinstate this environment.

Reinstate an Environment

1. Navigate to the Environment Details page for the disabled (with the role DISABLED-STANDBY) environment.

2. Click the Reinstate button. The Reinstate window appears.

   You are prompted for the credentials for the primary environment.

3. Enter the APPS Password.

4. Enter the WebLogic Password.

5. Enter the Database Admin Password.

6. Enter the Wallet Password.

7. Enter the EBS_SYSTEM Password.

8. Click Reinstate.

9. If the reinstate procedure is successful, then the environment becomes an active standby one with the environment role STANDARD-DR.

Delete a Disaster Recovery Environment

Follow this procedure to delete a disaster recovery environment. Note that deleting a DR environment is done through a separate job from deleting a standard environment.

You can delete a disaster recovery environment in one of two ways.

• Navigate to the Disaster Recovery tab of the primary environment's Environment Details page. Find the DR environment in the table and select Delete in the Actions column.

• Alternatively, from the DR environment's own Environment Details page, select Delete from the More Actions menu.