1. Administrator's Guide
  2. Managing Recovery Appliance
  3. Recovery Appliance Workflow

3 Recovery Appliance Workflow

This chapter explains the basic workflow for managing a Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance environment. Where appropriate, this chapter refers to Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Protected Database Configuration Guide. The chapter contains the following topics:

Separation of Duties in Recovery Appliance Administration

A typical Recovery Appliance environment includes personnel with the following roles:

  • Cloud Control administrator

    The application administrator with this role administers Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (Cloud Control). Duties may include:

    • Discovering targets, including the Recovery Appliance

    • Managing one or more protected databases

    • Managing one or more Recovery Appliances

  • Recovery Appliance administrator

    This administrator manages Recovery Appliance. Typical duties include:

    • Creating the protection policies

    • Assigning protected databases to protection policies

    • Managing space on Recovery Appliance

    • Configuring tape and replication operations

    • Creating the Recovery Appliance user accounts that own virtual private catalogs

    • Monitoring Recovery Appliance, and generating reports

  • Protected database administrator

    This administrator is responsible for configuring backups to the Recovery Appliance using the virtual private catalog account assigned by the Recovery Appliance administrator.

See Also:

Prerequisites for Recovery Appliance Administration

You must work with the Oracle field engineers to install and set up Recovery Appliance.

Tools for Recovery Appliance Administration

Use the following tools to complete administrative tasks for Recovery Appliance:

  • Cloud Control

    Cloud Control is a system management tool with a graphical user interface that enables you to manage and monitor Recovery Appliance and its protected databases. This is the preferred UI for Recovery Appliance tasks.

    See the Cloud Control online help for more information.

  • SQL*Plus

    SQL*Plus is a command-line tool that enables you to run DBMS_RA program units, and query recovery catalog views. You use SQL statements and Oracle-supplied PL/SQL packages to complete these tasks in SQL*Plus.

    See SQL*Plus User's Guide and Reference.

Planning for Recovery Appliance

You must complete the following general tasks:

Task 1: Group protected databases into tiers

Group databases based on their recovery requirements. By default, Recovery Appliance includes the protection policies Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Each policy corresponds to a level of protection. For example, Gold provides databases in this tier with real-time redo transport protection, whereas Bronze does not.

Task 2: Determine the recovery requirements for each database tier

For each database tier, make decisions about the following:

  • The maximum amount of time for potential data loss exposure

  • The disk recovery window goal

  • The recovery window for tape

  • The schedule for database tiers that back up to tape, and any tape vaulting or encryption requirements

  • Whether to configure Recovery Appliance replication

  • Directories for backup polling, if you intend to enable a backup polling policy

  • Whether existing recovery catalogs will be imported into the Recovery Appliance catalog

  • Whether to enable the guaranteed copy feature, which requires that backups on Recovery Appliance be copied to tape or replicated before being considered for deletion to reclaim space

  • The maximum retention time of backups on disk

See Also:

"About Protection Policies"

Task 3: Determine the recovery requirements for each protected database

For example, perform the following tasks:

See Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Protected Database Configuration Guide for additional planning considerations for protected databases.

Task 4: Determine access requirements for Recovery Appliance

Decide which persons have access to the Recovery Appliance in the data center. For example, database administrators, storage administrators, system administrators, and backup administrators may have different access requirements. In some data centers, a single person may play all roles.

Task 5: Create a backup migration plan to Recovery Appliance

In this stage, decide how your legacy RMAN backups fit into your Recovery Appliance backup strategy. After setting up Recovery Appliance, you may choose either of the following strategies:

  • Continue to run old backups to disk and tape concurrently with new backups to Recovery Appliance for a specified time, until you are ready to back up to Recovery Appliance exclusively.

  • Back up protected databases exclusively to Recovery Appliance, and then manage legacy backups on legacy media separately.

In either case, to simplify overall catalog management, Oracle recommends that you first import legacy RMAN recovery catalogs into the Recovery Appliance catalog.

See Also:

Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Protected Database Configuration Guide to learn how to import metadata into the Recovery Appliance catalog

Task 6: Review Cloud Control reporting and monitoring tools

Cloud Control is the preferred interface for Recovery Appliance. Before configuring Recovery Appliance, become familiar with the main Cloud Control pages, as described in Getting Started with Cloud Control for Recovery Appliance. Database administrators can also review backup-related pages such as Backup Settings, Schedule Backup, and Backup Reports.

See Also:

Setup and Configuration for Recovery Appliance

You must complete the following general tasks:

Task 1: Create Cloud Control user accounts

As explained in "Separation of Duties in Recovery Appliance Administration", a Recovery Appliance environment may require multiple administrative accounts. In this step, create the Cloud Control user accounts necessary for your environment.

Note:

These are application-level user accounts, not database user accounts.

See Also:

Cloud Control help to learn how to create Enterprise Manager user accounts

Task 2: Create a protection policy for each database tier

For each tier of protected databases, create a separate protection policy. "Basic Tasks for Managing Protection Policies" describes these tasks.

  1. Optionally, if your Recovery Appliance has access to a backup polling location, then create a backup polling policy.

    Note:

    If you are using Cloud Control, then this step is included in the protection policy configuration. When using DBMS_RA, you must run a separate procedure (CREATE_POLLING_POLICY).

    "Creating a Backup Polling Policy (Command-Line Only)" describes this task.

  2. Create a protection policy for a specific database tier.

    "Creating a Protection Policy" describes this task.

Task 3: Configure access on Recovery Appliance for protected databases

Create a virtual private catalog owner in the Recovery Appliance metadata database, add protected database metadata, and grant the catalog owner access to protected databases. Perform all of these steps on the Recovery Appliance, as explained in "Basic Tasks for Configuring Protected Database Access".

Task 4: Configure protected databases (for DBAs)

Protected database administrators perform this task, which does not involve running DBMS_RA procedures on Recovery Appliance. Client-side configuration includes the following subtasks:

  1. Configuring backup and recovery settings, including real-time redo transport

  2. Enabling access to the Recovery Appliance, which involves installing the Recovery Appliance Backup Module and authenticating the Recovery Appliance user account

  3. Testing backup and restore operations

See Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Protected Database Configuration Guide to learn how to configure protected databases.

Task 5: Migrate legacy backups to Recovery Appliance (for DBAs)

DBAs for protected databases perform this task, which does not involve running DBMS_RA procedures on Recovery Appliance. Migration includes importing legacy recovery catalogs into the Recovery Appliance catalog, and enabling the Recovery Appliance to access physical backups on disk or tape.

See Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Protected Database Configuration Guide to learn how to migrate legacy backups.

Task 6: Create copy-to-tape schedules to meet recovery requirements

If you employ tape devices in your environment, then you must create SBT attribute sets, schedule tape jobs, monitor tape backup status, and so on. You perform all of these steps on the Recovery Appliance, as explained in "Basic Tasks for Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance".

Task 7: Configure Recovery Appliance replication

This task involves configuring both the upstream Recovery Appliance and the downstream Recovery Appliance, and performing some steps on the protected database hosts. See "Basic Tasks for Configuring Recovery Appliance Replication".

Maintenance Tasks for Recovery Appliance

Typically, you must perform the following tasks:

Task 1: Monitor activity on Recovery Appliance

Using Cloud Control, monitor Recovery Appliance to ensure that business requirements are being met. For example, do the following:

  • Review any alerts or warnings

  • Verify that available space can meet all recovery windows

  • Verify that backup throughput meets performance requirements

See "Basic Tasks for Monitoring the Recovery Appliance".

Task 2: Monitor backup jobs (for DBA)

Protected database administrators must periodically monitor backup job reports for errors.

See Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Protected Database Configuration Guide.

Task 3: Generate and review reports on Recovery Appliance

Using Cloud Control, generate and review BI Publisher reports for storage usage and capacity planning.

See "Basic Tasks for Accessing Recovery Appliance Reports".

Task 4: Restart the Recovery Appliance

If necessary, shut down and start up the Recovery Appliance using operating system utilities and DBMS_RA procedures. See Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Owner's Guide to learn how to restart the Recovery Appliance.