Built on Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, the following are some of the required features to achieve an MAA Bronze level of service:
- Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) is used to perform regular backups of Oracle Database. RMAN provides data validation during backup and restore operations and provides advanced capabilities such as block recovery, table level recovery, schema level recovery, and multitenant PDB and CDB backup and recovery, that is not found in third-party utilities. The RPO, if there is an unrecoverable outage, is equal to the data generated since the last database and archive backup was taken. Copies of database backups are also retained at a remote location or on the Cloud for the dual purpose of archival and disaster recovery should a disaster strike the primary data center.
- Automatic Storage Management (ASM) is an Oracle-integrated file system and volume manager that includes intelligent data-aware software mirroring to protect against disk failure and some corruptions.
- Oracle Flashback Technologies provide fast error correction at a level of granularity that is appropriate to repair an individual transaction, table, pluggable database (PDB), or the full database. Flashback provides the most comprehensive toolset for logical repair, and allows an administrator to view previous transaction data versions for advanced analysis and repair.
- Oracle Restart automatically restarts the database, the listener, and other Oracle components after a hardware or software failure, or whenever a database host computer restarts. Oracle Clusterware, when available, has the same benefits.
- Oracle Corruption Protection checks for physical corruption and logical intra-block corruptions. In-memory corruptions are detected and prevented from being written to disk, and in many cases can be repaired automatically. For more details on data protection recommendations for Bronze or other tiered solutions, see Best Practices for Corruption Detection, Prevention, and Automatic Repair - in a Data Guard Configuration (Doc ID 1302539.1).
Optionally, you can enhance your high availability architecture by using these recommended features and capabilities:
- Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (ZDLRA) provides a sophisticated data center-wide backup and recovery solution for all Oracle databases. Key benefits include: incremental backup forever after first full backup, which minimizes overall impact on the source or protected databases and significantly reduces backup windows; real-time redo transport, reducing RPO for all databases to near zero; continuous data protection and validation, to ensure recovery readiness; and enhanced recovery and migration benefits.
- Online Maintenance includes online redefinition and reorganization for database maintenance, online file movement, and online patching.
- Oracle Multitenant and Resource Manager are the MAA best practice solutions for database consolidation and virtualization from Oracle Database 12c onward. Pluggable database (PDB) operations enable higher availability for pluggable database relocation, migration, failover, and upgrade cases. Resource Manager prevents applications and databases from consuming excessive resources, which can result in availability issues and potential downtime. Resource Manager controls can govern use of CPU, memory, OS processes, I/O (Exadata only), and network (Exadata only).
For more information about Oracle capabilities used in this MAA reference architectures, or to see the expected downtime for planned and unplanned outages, click on the objects in the graphic above
Learn more about Oracle MAA blueprints for reduced planned and unplanned downtime for Oracle Database on-premises, on Exadata Database Machine, and on Oracle Cloud.