Design a Disaster Recovery Topology for Oracle Analytics Cloud
Disaster Recovery is the process of preparing for and recovering from a disaster. A well-architected Disaster Recovery plan ensures you can recover quickly from disasters and continue to provide services to your users. A disaster can be any event that puts your applications at risk, from network outages to equipment and application failures to natural disasters.
The Service Level Agreement for Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC) calls for at least 99.9% availability. Despite having SLA on OAC Availability, for certain organizations, Statutory/Audit obligation require you have a DR Instance. Hence, you are responsible for Disaster Recovery planning. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides highly available and scalable infrastructure and services that enable you to design a Disaster Recovery topology. This reference architecture provides the architecture and guidelines for using OAC instances for Disaster Recovery.
Architecture
This architecture shows a multitier topology that has redundant resources distributed across two Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regions.
- An OAC private instance can't be accessed from public
internet so it requires an OCI public load balancer to facilitate the access.
The public load balancer's IP address will be added with the DNS registrar:
Description of the illustration oacprivate-x-region-dr-topology.png
- An OAC public instance can be accessed directly from
internet. The OAC public IP address will be directly configured with the DNS
registrar:
Description of the illustration oacpublic-x-region-dr-topology.png
- Tenancy
A tenancy is a secure and isolated partition that Oracle sets up within Oracle Cloud when you sign up for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. You can create, organize, and administer your resources in Oracle Cloud within your tenancy. A tenancy is synonymous with a company or organization. Usually, a company will have a single tenancy and reflect its organizational structure within that tenancy. A single tenancy is usually associated with a single subscription, and a single subscription usually only has one tenancy.
- Region
An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region is a localized geographic area that contains one or more data centers, called availability domains. Regions are independent of other regions, and vast distances can separate them (across countries or even continents).
- Compartment
Compartments are cross-region logical partitions within an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tenancy. Use compartments to organize your resources in Oracle Cloud, control access to the resources, and set usage quotas. To control access to the resources in a given compartment, you define policies that specify who can access the resources and what actions they can perform.
- Availability domains
Availability domains are standalone, independent data centers within a region. The physical resources in each availability domain are isolated from the resources in the other availability domains, which provides fault tolerance. Availability domains don’t share infrastructure such as power or cooling, or the internal availability domain network. So, a failure at one availability domain is unlikely to affect the other availability domains in the region. Fault domains A fault domain is a grouping of hardware and infrastructure within an availability domain. Each availability domain has three fault domains with independent power and hardware. When you distribute resources across multiple fault domains, your applications can tolerate physical server failure, system maintenance, and power failures inside a fault domain.
- Virtual cloud network (VCN) and subnets
A VCN is a customizable, software-defined network that you set up in an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region. Like traditional data center networks, VCNs give you complete control over your network environment. A VCN can have multiple non-overlapping CIDR blocks that you can change after you create the VCN. You can segment a VCN into subnets, which can be scoped to a region or to an availability domain. Each subnet consists of a contiguous range of addresses that don't overlap with the other subnets in the VCN. You can change the size of a subnet after creation. A subnet can be public or private.
- Load balancer
The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Load Balancing service provides automated traffic distribution from a single entry point to multiple servers in the back end. The load balancer provides access to different applications. Security list For each subnet, you can create security rules that specify the source, destination, and type of traffic that must be allowed in and out of the subnet.
- NAT gateway
The NAT gateway enables private resources in a VCN to access hosts on the internet, without exposing those resources to incoming internet connections. Service gateway The service gateway provides access from a VCN to other services, such as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage. The traffic from the VCN to the Oracle service travels over the Oracle network fabric and never traverses the internet.
- Cloud Guard
You can use Oracle Cloud Guard to monitor and maintain the security of your resources in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Cloud Guard uses detector recipes that you can define to examine your resources for security weaknesses and to monitor operators and users for risky activities. When any misconfiguration or insecure activity is detected, Cloud Guard recommends corrective actions and assists with taking those actions, based on responder recipes that you can define.
- Security zone
Security zones ensure Oracle's security best practices from the start by enforcing policies such as encrypting data and preventing public access to networks for an entire compartment. A security zone is associated with a compartment of the same name and includes security zone policies or a "recipe" that applies to the compartment and its sub-compartments. You can't add or move a standard compartment to a security zone compartment.
- Object storage
Object storage provides quick access to large amounts of structured and unstructured data of any content type, including database backups, analytic data, and rich content such as images and videos. You can safely and securely store and then retrieve data directly from the internet or from within the cloud platform. You can seamlessly scale storage without experiencing any degradation in performance or service reliability. Use standard storage for "hot" storage that you need to access quickly, immediately, and frequently. Use archive storage for "cold" storage that you retain for long periods of time and seldom or rarely access.
- FastConnect
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect provides an easy way to create a dedicated, private connection between your data center and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. FastConnect provides higher-bandwidth options and a more reliable networking experience when compared with internet-based connections.
- Local peering gateway (LPG)
An LPG enables you to peer one VCN with another VCN in the same region. Peering means the VCNs communicate using private IP addresses, without the traffic traversing the internet or routing through your on-premises network.
- Autonomous Database
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure autonomous databases are fully managed, preconfigured database environments that you can use for transaction processing and data warehousing workloads. You do not need to configure or manage any hardware, or install any software. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure handles creating the database, as well as backing up, patching, upgrading, and tuning the database.
- Oracle Analytics Cloud
Oracle Analytics Cloud is a scalable and secure public cloud service that provides a full set of capabilities to explore and perform collaborative analytics for you, your workgroup, and your enterprise. With Oracle Analytics Cloud, you also get flexible service management capabilities, including fast setup, easy scaling and patching, and automated lifecycle management. As of document writing, OAC is available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Gen 2 in several regions in North America, EMEA, APAC, and LAD.
- Object storage
Object storage provides quick access to large amounts of structured and unstructured data of any content type, including database backups, analytic data, and rich content such as images and videos. You can safely and securely store and then retrieve data directly from the internet or from within the cloud platform. You can seamlessly scale storage without experiencing any degradation in performance or service reliability. Use standard storage for "hot" storage that you need to access quickly, immediately, and frequently. Use archive storage for "cold" storage that you retain for long periods of time and seldom or rarely access. The architecture shows object storage in the primary region being replicated to the standby region automatically by using a cross-region replication policy.
- Database
The architecture includes a database in each region. Oracle Data Guard is used for data replication and ensures that the standby database is a transactionally consistent copy of the primary database. Data Guard automatically maintains synchronization between the databases by transmitting and applying redo data from the primary database to the standby. In the event of a disaster in the primary region, Data Guard fails over automatically to the standby database.
- Dynamic routing gateway (DRG)
The DRG is a virtual router that provides a path for private network traffic between a VCN and a network outside the region, such as a VCN in another Oracle Cloud Infrastructure region, an on-premises network, or a network in another cloud provider.
Recommendations
- VCN
When you create a VCN, determine the number of CIDR blocks required and the size of each block based on the number of resources that you plan to attach to subnets in the VCN. Use CIDR blocks that are within the standard private IP address space.
Select CIDR blocks that don't overlap with any other network (in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, your on-premises data center, or another cloud provider) to which you intend to set up private connections.
After you create a VCN, you can change, add, and remove its CIDR blocks.
When you design the subnets, consider your traffic flow and security requirements. Attach all the resources within a specific tier or role to the same subnet, which can serve as a security boundary.
Use regional subnets.
- Security
Use Oracle Cloud Guard to monitor and maintain the security of your resources in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure proactively. Cloud Guard uses detector recipes that you can define to examine your resources for security weaknesses and to monitor operators and users for risky activities. When any misconfiguration or insecure activity is detected, Cloud Guard recommends corrective actions and assists with taking those actions, based on responder recipes that you can define.
For resources that require maximum security, Oracle recommends that you use security zones. A security zone is a compartment associated with an Oracle-defined recipe of security policies that are based on best practices. For example, the resources in a security zone must not be accessible from the public internet and they must be encrypted using customer-managed keys. When you create and update resources in a security zone, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure validates the operations against the policies in the security-zone recipe, and denies operations that violate any of the policies.
- Cloud Guard
Clone and customize the default recipes provided by Oracle to create custom detector and responder recipes. These recipes enable you to specify what type of security violations generate a warning and what actions are allowed to be performed on them. For example, you might want to detect Object Storage buckets that have visibility set to public.
Apply Cloud Guard at the tenancy level to cover the broadest scope and to reduce the administrative burden of maintaining multiple configurations.
You can also use the Managed List feature to apply certain configurations to detectors.
- Security zones
For resources that require maximum security, Oracle recommends that you use security zones. A security zone is a compartment associated with an Oracle-defined recipe of security policies that are based on best practices. For example, the resources in a security zone must not be accessible from the public internet and they must be encrypted using customer-managed keys. When you create and update resources in a security zone, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure validates the operations against the policies in the security-zone recipe, and denies operations that violate any of the policies.
- Network security groups (NSGs)
You can use NSGs to define a set of ingress and egress rules that apply to specific VNICs. We recommend using NSGs rather than security lists, because NSGs enable you to separate the VCN's subnet architecture from the security requirements of your application.
You can use NSGs to define a set of ingress and egress rules that apply to specific VNICs. We recommend using NSGs rather than security lists, because NSGs enable you to separate the VCN's subnet architecture from the security requirements of your application.
- Load balancer bandwidth
While creating the load balancer, you can either select a predefined shape that provides a fixed bandwidth, or specify a custom (flexible) shape where you set a bandwidth range and let the service scale the bandwidth automatically based on traffic patterns. With either approach, you can change the shape at any time after creating the load balancer.
- DNS Resolution
By default, the Internet and VCN Resolver does not let instances resolve the hostnames of hosts in your on-premises network connected to your VCN by Site-to-Site VPN or FastConnect. That functionality is achieved either by using a custom resolver or by configuring the VCN’s private DNS resolver.
- Snapshot Backup
Oracle recommends that you take snapshots at significant checkpoints; for example, before you make a major change to your content or environment. In addition, Oracle recommends that you take regular weekly snapshots or at your own defined frequency based on the rate of change of your environment and rollback requirements or RPO timelines. Use Object Storeage to store the snapsot file.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Oracle recommends that you use an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Web Application Firewall in this architecture. WAF is a regional-based and edge enforcement service that is attached to an enforcement point, such as a load balancer or a web application domain name. WAF protects applications from malicious and unwanted internet traffic. WAF can protect any internet-facing endpoint, providing consistent rule enforcement across a customer's applications.
Considerations
Consider the following points when deploying this reference architecture.
- Performance
When planning the RPO and RTO, consider the time required for volume backups to be copied across regions.
- Availability
You can use custom DNS Domain Settings to redirect client traffic to the current production region after a failover.
- Cost
In the event of a failover from the primary to the standby region, you can save approximately 80% of the cost by using the Secondary Instance. As a Secondary instance can be in pause mode.
- Database Source
Your database sources already have certain Disaster Recovery procedures; for example, synchronizing databases by using Oracle Data Guard.
- Vanity URL
You have prerequisites for Vanity URLs, such as custom domains and certificates.
- Configurations The following configurations in the primary and secondary instances will not be carried on the snapshot backup, thus you need to synchronize them based on your change management process.
- Virus scanner configuration
- Mail server configuration
- Other saved snapshots in the source environment
- Users (and groups)
- Identity management configuration (example SSO)
- Network configuration
- DB Connection
Your RPD DB connection to the primary and secondary databases should be the same.