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

• Planning for 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.

• 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 SQLPlus User’s Guide and Reference*.

Planning for Recovery Appliance

You must complete the following general tasks:

• Task 1: Group protected databases into tiers

• Task 2: Determine the recovery requirements for each database tier

• Task 3: Determine the recovery requirements for each protected database

• Task 4: Determine access requirements for Recovery Appliance

• Task 5: Create a backup migration plan to Recovery Appliance

• Task 6: Review Cloud Control reporting and monitoring tools

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:

• Calculate the reserved space, which is based on the protected database size, change rate, and recovery window goal.

  The protection policy can make use of autotune_reserved_space parameter if compliance features not required. When enabled, the Recovery Appliance automatically defines and updates the reserved_space (the minimum allocated per database) based on computed recovery_window_space to meet recovery window goal, up to the total available free space. This is handled for all databases associated with this policy.

  For compliance backups, reserved_space is a hard limit allocated for a given database, so autotune_reserved_space does not apply.

  When database is first created or resumed without explicit reserved_space set and autotune_reserved_space enabled, it has the state PROVISIONAL. Once a resync and an initial backup provided, it transitions into an ACTIVE or enabled state.

• Decide whether to implement real-time redo transport

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.