1. Administrator's Guide
  2. Managing Recovery Appliance
  3. Managing Protection Policies with Recovery Appliance
  4. Creating a Backup Polling Policy (Command-Line Only)

Creating a Backup Polling Policy (Command-Line Only)

An optional backup polling policy defines a directory where a protected database places backup sets without interacting directly with a Recovery Appliance. The backup polling directory must be created on an external file system and made accessible to a Recovery Appliance as an NFS mount point. The polling policy defines the file system path to the storage and how often the Recovery Appliance checks it for new backup sets (not image copies). Specify the polling policy name within a protection policy.

Note:

The separate step of creating a backup polling policy is not necessary in Cloud Control, which includes it in the Create Protection Policy page.

Backup polling policies are useful for the following reasons:

  • If a Recovery Appliance is offline, then protected databases can continue to send backups to backup polling locations. When a Recovery Appliance comes online, it can poll these locations for backups.

  • If the storage network is faster than your Ethernet, and if you configure the polling location in network storage, then protected database backups to the polling location may be faster.

  • You can use a polling location when migrating legacy backups to a Recovery Appliance.

Protected databases that use backup polling store backup pieces and archived redo log files in shared storage. The Recovery Appliance periodically retrieves and processes backups from the shared storage.

Prerequisites

You must log in to the metadata database as RASYS.

Assumptions

Assume that you want to create a polling policy that meets the following requirements:

  • The Recovery Appliance must poll the /u03/shared/polling1 directory, which is a shared directory accessible by the Recovery Appliance and all protected databases.

  • You want the Recovery Appliance to poll the shared directory every 4 hours.

  • You want the Recovery Appliance to delete backups from the shared directory after it has processed them.

To create a backup polling policy:

  1. Start SQL*Plus or SQL Developer, and then log in to the metadata database as RASYS.

  2. Run the DBMS_RA.CREATE_POLLING_POLICY procedure.

    For example, execute the following PL/SQL anonymous block:

    BEGIN
  DBMS_RA.CREATE_POLLING_POLICY (
    polling_policy_name   => 'nas_polling1',
    polling_location      => '/u03/shared/polling1',
    polling_frequency     =>  INTERVAL '4' HOUR,
    delete_input          =>  TRUE);
END;

  3. Optionally, query the recovery catalog to confirm creation of the policy.

    For example, query RA_POLLING_POLICY as follows (sample output included): 

    COL POLLING_NAME FORMAT a15
COL DEST FORMAT a40
SELECT POLLING_NAME, DEST, DELETE_INPUT,
       TO_CHAR(EXTRACT(DAY FROM FREQUENCY),'fm00')||':'||
       TO_CHAR(EXTRACT(HOUR FROM FREQUENCY),'fm00')||':'||
       TO_CHAR(EXTRACT(MINUTE FROM FREQUENCY),'fm00')||':'||
       TO_CHAR(EXTRACT(SECOND FROM FREQUENCY),'fm00')
         AS "DD:HH:MM:SS"
FROM   RA_POLLING_POLICY;

POLLING_NAME    DEST                                     DELET DD:HH:MM:SS
--------------- ---------------------------------------- ----- ---------------
NAS_POLLING1    /u03/shared/polling1/                    TRUE  00:04:00:00

See Also: