1. Administering Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service
  2. Backing Up and Restoring Databases on Database Classic Cloud Service
  3. About Backing Up Database Deployments on Database Classic Cloud Service

About Backing Up Database Deployments on Database Classic Cloud Service

By backing up your Oracle Database Classic Cloud Service database deployments, you can protect the software, configuration and database against loss if a failure occurs. By restoring from a backup, you can restore the deployment's software, configuration, and database to their state at the time of the backup.

Database Classic Cloud Service provides a backup feature that backs up:

  • The database

  • Database configuration files

  • Grid Infrastructure configuration files (on deployments hosting an Oracle RAC database)

  • Important system and cloud tooling files

To provide this backup feature, Database Classic Cloud Service relies on system utilities, Oracle Database utilities, and Oracle Database Backup Cloud Service, all of which are installed in the database deployment.

Default Backup Configuration

When you create a database deployment, you choose one of the following backup destinations:

  • Both Cloud Storage and Local Storage. Backups are configured to be created automatically and stored both on local compute node storage and on an Oracle Storage Cloud Service container.

  • Cloud Storage Only. Backups are configured to be created automatically and stored on an Oracle Storage Cloud Service container.

    Note:

    This choice is not currently available for database deployments that use Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC).

  • None. No backup configuration is created.

If you want backups of your database, Oracle recommends that you choose one of the automatic backup configurations instead of manually creating backups.

The backup configuration created when you choose a destination other than None follows a set of Oracle best-practice guidelines:

  • Full (level 0) backup of the database followed by rolling incremental (level 1) backups on a seven-day cycle (a 30-day cycle for the Cloud Storage Only destination)

  • Full backup of selected database configuration files

  • Full backup of selected system files

  • Automatic backups daily at a time between 11 PM (23:00) and 3 AM (03:00), with the specific time set during the database deployment creation process

  • Retention period:

    • Both Cloud Storage and Local Storage: 30 days, with the 7 most recent days' backups available on local storage

    • Cloud Storage Only: 30 days

  • Encryption:

    • Both Cloud Storage and Local Storage: All backups to cloud storage are encrypted; backups of Enterprise Edition databases to local storage are encrypted; backups of Standard Edition databases to local storage are not encrypted.

    • Cloud Storage Only: All backups to cloud storage are encrypted.

If the defaults do not suit your needs, you can customize the backup configuration for your database deployment. For information, see Customizing the Current Backup Configuration.

You can also change the entire backup configuration from the one used when your deployment was created. For information, see Enabling and Reconfiguring the Automatic Backups Feature.

About Local Storage for Backups

When a database deployment is created on Database Classic Cloud Service, Oracle Compute Cloud Service storage volumes are created and associated with the compute nodes. The storage volume reserved for backups is named fra. On deployments hosting Oracle RAC databases, this storage volume is shared by the compute nodes.

You can see details about fra (as well as other storage volumes) in the Compute Cloud Service console. See Viewing Details of a Storage Volume in Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute Classic.

The space allocated for the local storage used for backups on fra is 1.7 times the space allocated for data storage. For example, if you chose 100 GB for Usable Database Storage when creating the database deployment, 170 GB are allocated for backups.