About Protection Policies

Recovery Service uses protection policies to control specific requirements for backup retention, storage location, and backup protection. Use the OCI Console to configure and manage protection policies.

Protection Policies enable automatic backup management for protected databases. Each protected database must be associated with one protection policy. A protection policy allows you to define these rules for backup retention, protection, and backup storage location (for Oracle Multicloud Databases):

• Backup retention period (required)

  Defines the maximum period to retain database backups created by Recovery Service. The allowed range is 14 days to 95 days.

• Retention lock (optional)

  Safeguards protected database backups by restricting the modification or deletion of backups until the retention period ends. Preferred cloud location to store backups (optional)

• Preferred cloud location to store backups (optional) Recovery Service supports Oracle Multicloud Databases and provides the flexibility to store backups either in Oracle Cloud (default storage location) or in the same cloud location where the database resides.

  By default, Recovery Service stores protected databases and related backups in Oracle Cloud. You can override this default behavior for your Oracle Multicloud Database services.

  Recovery Service supports Oracle AI Database@Azure, Oracle AI Database@Google Cloud, and Oracle AI Database@AWS.

  If you enable the Store backups in the same cloud provider as the database option for a protection policy, then Recovery Service stores the policy-linked protected database and its backups in the target database cloud location instead of Oracle Cloud. For example, for Oracle AI Database@Azure, Recovery Service stores the associated protected database backups in Azure if you have selected the Store backups in the same cloud provider as the database in the protection policy.

Based on your business requirements, you can assign separate policies for each protected database or use a single policy across all protected databases in a VCN. You can use these two types of protection policies:

Oracle defined Protection Policies

There are four Oracle-defined protection policies based on typical use cases for backup retention. You cannot modify these policies.

• Platinum (95 days): The Platinum policy retains backups for 95 days
• Gold (65 days): The Gold policy retains backups for 65 days
• Silver (35 days): The Silver policy retains backups for 35 days
• Bronze (14 days): The Bronze policy retains backups for 14 days

User defined Protection Policies

These are custom protection policies that you can create based on your business requirements. Custom policies limit backup retention period to a minimum period of 14 days and to a maximum period of 95 days.

The OCI Console is the primary interface to configure protection policies for all databases in your tenancy.

Applying Tags

Apply tags to resources to help organize them according to your business needs. You can apply tags to a resource when you create it, and you can update a resource later to add, revise, or remove tags. For general information about tags and instructions for applying them, see Resource Tags.