About Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance

This section contains the following topics:

Purpose of Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance

A robust backup strategy protects data against intentional attacks, unintentional user errors (such as file deletions), and software or hardware malfunctions. Tape libraries provide effective protection against these possibilities.

The advantages of the Recovery Appliance tape solution are as follows:

  • Tape backups are ideal for long-term storage. Tapes are portable and easy to store for lengthy periods of time.

  • All tape backup operations are performed by the Recovery Appliance, with no performance load on the protected database host.

  • Tape backups are optimized. Recovery Appliance intelligently gathers the necessary blocks to create a virtual, full backup or incremental backup for tape. Although Recovery Appliance backups are incremental forever, you can create a flexible backup strategy to tape, such as weekly full and daily incremental or just daily full backups.

  • Oracle Secure Backup is pre-installed, eliminating the need for third-party media managers.

  • Tape drives and tape libraries function more efficiently because Recovery Appliance is a single large centralized system with complete control over them. In other tape solutions, hundreds or thousands of databases can compete for tape resources in an uncoordinated manner.

See Also:

"Autonomous Tape Archival"

Overview of Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance

This section contains the following topics:

About Tape Operations on Recovery Appliance

All backups that Recovery Appliance receives from protected databases are always first stored on disk. The Recovery Appliance can then optionally copy these backups to tape. All copying to tape is automated, policy-driven, and scheduled.

A protection policy defines desired recovery windows for backups stored on tape. Recovery windows are expressed as time intervals, such as 30 days. Backups are retained on tape long enough for a recovery to be possible at any time within this interval, counting backward from the current time.

You can copy Recovery Appliance backups from disk to tape. To perform this task, you must create a tape backup job that defines the properties of the copy operation, such as the media manager library and attribute set that will manage this job, the protection policy or the database for which the backups need to be copied, and so on. After you have defined the job properties, you must schedule this job to run.

Note:

  • Only backups that have not already been copied to tape are processed in a tape backup operation for each tape backup job template with which the backup is associated. Thus, a tape backup operation on the same backup after the initial tape copy has no effect. In addition, only the most recent backup is copied to tape when the tape backup operation runs.

    If you require more than one copy of the same backup, such as to a different media family on tape, use the COPIES parameter of the template or create a separate tape backup job template for the additional copy.

  • Virtual full backups copied to tape or cloud use RMAN FILESPERSET=1 setting. Incremental backups copied to tape use the FILESPERSET setting as specified in the RMAN incremental backup command to the Recovery Appliance.

  • Backup pieces, such as archive logs, are grouped together and copied as a single piece. These backup pieces are larger on cloud or tape storage. This feature is disabled by default and can group a maximum of 64 archived logs per backup piece that is copied to cloud or tape. The effects of inter-job latencies are reduced when fewer individual pieces are transmitted.

  • Long-term archival backups that were created with the KEEP option of the BACKUP command are never automatically copied to tape. You must manually copy them using the COPY_BACKUP or MOVE_BACKUP procedure.

    See My Oracle Support Note Doc ID 2107079.1 (http://support.oracle.com/epmos/faces/DocumentDisplay?id=2107079.1) to learn how to create archival backups for long term retention on the Recovery Appliance

During a restore, Recovery Appliance transparently retrieves the backup from tape.

Recovery Appliance writes backups to tape in formats supported by RMAN. If a protected database has the required media management software (for example, Oracle Secure Backup), then it can directly restore backups written to tape by the Recovery Appliance.

Grouping Backup Pieces

The performance of copy-to-tape and archive-to-cloud is improved by grouping archived logs from protected databases' real-time redo into fewer number of backup sets.

Protected databases can achieve real-time protection by enabling real-time redo transport to the Recovery Appliance. Each received redo log on the appliance is compressed and written to the storage location as an individual archived log backup. These log backups can be archived to tape or cloud, to support fulls and incremental backups that are archived for long-term retention needs.

  • To tape: use Oracle Secure Backup (OSB) module or a third-party backup software module installed on the Recovery Appliance.

  • To cloud: use the Cloud Backup SBT module.

Inter-job latencies can happen between writing each backup piece during copy-to-tape operations. When the number of backup pieces is high, this pause constitutes a large percentage of the time the tape drive is unavailable. This means five (5) 10GB pieces will go to tape more quickly than fifty (50) 1GB pieces.

Recovery Appliance addresses inter-job latency by grouping the archived log backup pieces together and copying them as a single backup piece. Therefore this results in larger backup pieces on tape storage than previous releases. This feature is enabled by default. DMBS_RA CONFIG has the parameter group_log_max_count for setting the maximum archived logs per backup piece that is copied to tape; its default is 1. The group_log_backup_size_gb parameter is used to limit the size of these larger backup pieces; its default is 256 GB.

Recovery Appliance Components for Managing Tape Operations

Every database in a Recovery Appliance setup is associated with a protection policy that specifies the parameters for backup storage and recovery window goal. To manage and control tape operations, you must create a job that uses the properties defined by the selected protection policy, media manager library, and attribute set to copy backups to tape. Oracle Secure Backup and its components (media manager library and attribute sets) are preconfigured with Recovery Appliance.

Table 9-1 summarizes the roles of the Recovery Appliance objects for managing tape operations.

Table 9-1 Recovery Appliance Objects for Copying Backups to Tape

Cloud Control Object Name Command-line Object Name Description

Protection policy

Protection policy

Among other attributes, defines the recovery window. This recovery window is applied to all protected databases assigned to the protection policy.

Media manager library

SBT library

Describes a media management software library installed on Recovery Appliance.

Media manager attribute set

SBT attribute set

Contains a collection of attributes that control the copy operation. One attribute specifies the library to be used in the copy operation. Other attributes are optional and can include channel parameters, media management software library–specific commands, and a media pool identifier. You can define multiple attribute sets, but only one attribute set is associated with a given copy job.

Copy-to-tape job template

SBT job template

Defines the properties of backups to be copied to tape and specifies an attribute set to control the copy operation. Typically, multiple job templates are defined.

Note:

The Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (Cloud Control) object name and the command-line name in Table 9-1 refer to the same tape backup objects, with their respective interface terms.

See Also:

"Basic Tasks for Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance" for more information on how to create a tape backup job using these components

Backup Retention on Tape

You can control the length of time that backup copies are retained on tape by specifying a recovery window. A recovery window defines how long the Recovery Appliance maintains tape backups in its catalog for recovery purposes. The recovery window is expressed as an interval, in values of hours, days, weeks, or months. Backups are retained long enough to guarantee that a recovery is possible to any point in time within this interval, counting backward from the current time.

Note:

Recovery windows directly apply only to full or level 0 data file and control file backups.

Recovery Appliance does not purge tape backups. Instead, it informs the media manager which pieces are no longer needed for RMAN retention. With Oracle Secure Backup as the media manager, it does not explicitly delete these files, it updates its catalog. After all files on a given tape are no longer needed, Oracle Secure Backup considers the tape for reuse.

You set the recovery window for a backup by providing a value for it in the protection policy. If this attribute is NULL, then Recovery Appliance never purges the backup from tape.

See Also:

About Pausing and Resuming Tape Backup Operations

You might want to pause the copying of backups to tape for these reasons:

  • To investigate previous backup copy failures

  • To perform maintenance operations on tape devices

You pause tape backup operations for a specific media management software library by pausing its corresponding media manager library.

When you pause a media manager library, in-progress copies of backup pieces are allowed to complete, while backup pieces that were queued for copy but not yet copied are held until you resume the library. Pausing a library suspends future scheduled runs of tape backup jobs that reference the media manager library.

Note:

Tape backup jobs reference media manager libraries indirectly through their assigned media manager attribute sets.

See Also:

About Using Oracle Secure Backup with Recovery Appliance

Oracle Secure Backup is a media manager that provides reliable, centralized tape management by protecting file-system data and Oracle Database files for multiple environments. Oracle Secure Backup is the tape management component for Recovery Appliance. It is installed with its components on the Recovery Appliance during its configuration.

Preconfigured Oracle Secure Backup components include the following:

Media Manager Library

During its installation, while Recovery Appliance is being configured, Oracle Secure Backup creates a media manager library with default parameters, such as the following:

  • Library name (ROBOT0)

  • Maximum number of accessible tape drives

  • Number of restore drives

  • Media manager location

Apart from the name, other media manager library parameters can be modified. This library manages the tape backup operations associated with it, based on the parameters set.

Media Manager Attribute Sets

Along with a media manager library, Oracle Secure Backup also comes installed with attribute sets for all tape drives that the default media manager library accesses.

These attribute sets have default values for parameters like the media pool number and streams required for the copy operation. These and the media manager vendor parameters and commands can be modified. The default attribute sets are named DRIVE_COUNT_1, DRIVE_COUNT_2, DRIVE_COUNT_3, and so on for the number of tape drives accessed by the media manager library.

See Also:

User Interfaces for Recovery Appliance

You can manage and perform tape backup job operations by using either Cloud Control or the Recovery Appliance command-line options.

This section contains the following topics:

Accessing Recovery Appliance in Cloud Control

To access Recovery Appliance using Cloud Control, complete the steps listed in "Accessing the Recovery Appliance Home Page".

Accessing Recovery Appliance Using DBMS_RA

This section contains the following topics:

DBMS_RA Procedures for Tape Backup Operations

This section lists the Recovery Appliance DBMS_RA procedures that are associated with SBT job operations. They are applicable for tape, cloud, and archive operations.

Table 9-2 DBMS_RA Procedures Associated with Tape/Cloud/Archive Backup Operations

SBT Object Procedures

SBT Job

SBT Library

SBT Attribute Set

Protection Policy

Backup

See Also:

"DBMS_RA Package Reference" for more information on other Recovery Appliance DBMS_RA procedures

Recovery Catalog Views for Tape Operations

This section lists the Recovery Appliance recovery catalog views that are associated with SBT job operations:

See Also:

Recovery Appliance View Reference for more information on other Recovery Appliance data dictionary views

Basic Tasks for Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance

This section lists the high level essential steps to copy database backups to tape using Recovery Appliance.

See Also:

"About Copying Backups to Tape with Recovery Appliance"

To copy backups to tape using Recovery Appliance:

  1. Create a media manager library for your media management software to manage all your tape backup jobs by adding parameters that apply to a set of jobs.

    Recovery Appliance uses Oracle Secure Backup as its media management software. During its setup, Recovery Appliance installs Oracle Secure Backup with a preconfigured media manager library and attribute sets.

    See Also:

    "Creating a Media Manager Library" for more information on how to create additional media manager libraries

  2. Create a media manager attribute set that helps you control your tape backup jobs further by adding more job-specific parameters and commands for your media manager software.

    Tape backup jobs use a combination of parameters specified at the media manager library level and the attribute set level while performing the copy operation. Media manager libraries define parameters that apply to a set of jobs while attribute sets help further define tape backup settings for specified jobs.

    Oracle Secure Backup also configures default attribute sets for all drives that are a part of the default media manager library.

    See Also:

    "Creating an Attribute Set" for more information on creating additional attribute sets

  3. Create a tape backup job.

    The job definition includes job properties such as the media manager library and attribute set associated with this job, the type of backups that need to be copied to tape, the run-time window for this job, and so on.

    You can also schedule this job to run at a specified time according to your task requirements.

    See Also:

    "Creating a Tape Backup Job" for more information on creating tape backup jobs

  4. (Optional) If required, pause or resume a media manager library or a tape backup job.

    See Also:

    "Pausing and Resuming Tape Backup Operations"

  5. View the status of all media manager libraries and tape backup operations to check for errors.

    See Also:

    "Viewing the Status of Tape Backup Operations"

You may want to create additional media families for refining backup properties or to schedule vaulting to manage your tape. Use the Recovery Appliance Oracle Secure Backup domain to complete these tasks.

See Also:

Accessing the Oracle Secure Backup Domain Using Cloud Control

Use Cloud Control to access the Oracle Secure Backup domain. You can use this domain to manage (if required) the existing Oracle Secure Backup configurations set for the selected Recovery Appliance environment.

To access the Oracle Secure Backup domain using Cloud Control:

  1. From the Cloud Control Home page, select Targets.

  2. From the Targets Menu, select All Targets.

    The All Targets page appears.

  3. On the All Targets page, under the Refine Search Menu, select Databases as the Target Type.

  4. Under the Databases section, select Oracle Secure Backup Domain.

    A list of all Oracle Secure Backup Domains for all existing Recovery Appliance targets appears.

  5. From the list of targets, click the target for which you want to access the Oracle Secure Backup domain.

    The Oracle Secure Backup domain for the selected Recovery Appliance appears.

See Also:

"About Using Oracle Secure Backup with Recovery Appliance"