Oracle Secure Backup

Oracle Secure Backup is the tape management component of Recovery Appliance. The Recovery Appliance offloads tape backup operations from protected databases to the Recovery Appliance. Thus, protected database hosts do not need the RMAN-integrated media management software module. Instead, a single copy of the Oracle Secure Backup module is installed on Recovery Appliance. The Recovery Appliance automatically manages the copy of backups to tape for all protected databases.

Tape Archival

Protected databases send backups to the Recovery Appliance, which stores them on disk in the specified storage locations. To reclaim disk space and to create transportable tape backups, business requirements may necessitate archival to tape.

Tape backups are a repetitive task that the Recovery Appliance automates and performs as a background task. The Recovery Appliance administrator configures rules that specify the frequency with which the Recovery Appliance creates tape backups. Because the protection policy is a natural grouping of databases, databases sharing the same protection policy can share the same tape archival requirements.

Recovery Appliance creates tape backups in the compatibility version that matches the greatest compatibility version of any full or incremental backup that contributes blocks to the backup. The database identity information that the Recovery Appliance sends to the media management layer is identical to the information that would be sent if the database were sending the backup. This consistency guarantees that the database for which the backups were created can use them.

Tape Retrieval

Backups are stored on tape as complete backup sets, not virtual backups, so tape backups are usable by RMAN without mediation by the Recovery Appliance. You can restore backups from tape in the following ways:

Retrieval by Recovery Appliance

This is the simplest way to restore an SBT backup created by Recovery Appliance. RMAN requests the restore from Recovery Appliance, without needing to be aware that this particular backup has been moved to tape. Recovery Appliance recognizes that the requested backup set is located on tape, open an SBT session to restore the backup from the media manager, and transfer the data over the network to the protected database host.
Retrieval by protected database

Because the SBT backups exist in a client-compatible format, RMAN can restore the backups from tape directly to any host, without involving Recovery Appliance. In this case, RMAN must first catalog the backup pieces before it can restore them from tape, and the Oracle Secure Backup library must be installed on the protected database host.