Use the information in this section in conjunction with Oracle Exadata Deployment Assistant (OEDA) to configure your Recovery Appliance environment.

To deploy Recovery Appliance ensure that you meet the minimum network requirements. Recovery Appliance requires a minimum of three networks, and there are interfaces available for additional networks. Each network must be on a separate and distinct subnet. The network descriptions are as follows:

• Administration Network: Also known as the management network, this required network connects to your existing management network infrastructure, and is used for administrative work on all components of Recovery Appliance. By default, the administration network connects the compute servers, storage servers, server Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) interfaces, and RDMA Network Fabric switches to the Management Network Switch in the rack. One uplink is required from the Management Network Switch to your management network.

  Each compute server and storage server has two network interfaces for administration. One interface provides management access to the operating system through a dedicated Ethernet port. The other network interface is dedicated to ILOM. By default, Recovery Appliance is delivered with both interfaces connected to the Management Network Switch. Cabling or configuration changes to these interfaces is not permitted, except that the ILOM interfaces can be connected to a dedicated ILOM network, which is separate from the administration network. The administration network interfaces on the compute servers should not be used for client or application network traffic.

  Notes:

  • Separate uplinks to your management network are also recommended for remote monitoring of each power distribution unit (PDU). This configuration enables you to easily differentiate between system outages caused by PDU failure as opposed to failure of the Management Network Switch.
  • A properly secured configuration requires full isolation of the administration network from all other networks.

• Ingest Network: This required network connects the protected Oracle Database servers to Recovery Appliance for backup within the same data center. Also known as a backup network, this high-speed, private Ethernet network must be designed to support the transfer of large volumes of data. Recovery Appliance connects to this network using two 10/25 GB connections to each of the two compute servers in the rack. You can configure the two connections as active/passive (redundant) or active/active.

  The compute servers support channel bonding to provide higher bandwidth and availability.

  Single client access name (SCAN) supports failover between the two compute servers in the Recovery Appliance. In an installation with multiple Recovery Appliance racks configured as a cluster, virtual IP (VIP) addresses support failover among the racks. The protected database systems can resolve the host names to dynamically assigned addresses.

  Third-party tape hardware and software also uses the ingest network.

• Private Network: Also known as the RDMA Network Fabric, storage network, or interconnect. This network connects the compute servers and storage servers. Oracle Database uses this network for Oracle RAC cluster interconnect traffic and for accessing data on the Oracle Exadata Storage Servers. The private network is automatically configured during installation. It is non-routable, fully contained in Recovery Appliance, and does not connect to your existing networks.

  Starting with Recovery Appliance X8M, the private network uses RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE).

  Previously, the private network was built using InfiniBand technology. RoCE Network Fabric uses different switches and cables from those used by InfiniBand Network Fabric.

• Replication network: The optional replication network uses available ports not used by the administration and the ingest network. It connects the local Recovery Appliance (the upstream appliance) with a remote Recovery Appliance (the downstream appliance). Oracle recommends a broadband, encrypted network, instead of an insecure public network, wherever possible.

  Recovery Appliance supports the following configurations between the upstream and downstream appliances:

  Note:

  A downstream Recovery Appliance or a tape library can reside in the local data center. The replication network is not used in a local configuration.

  The replication network must not be used for the purpose of ingesting backups.

• Fiber Channel SAN network: If you are using Oracle Secure Backup, then you can back up Recovery Appliance to the storage area network (SAN) in your data center for backups to tape. The network connections depend on whether you have an Oracle tape solution or use third-party hardware.

Ingest and replication networks can be configured active/passive or active/active bonding.

• Active / Passive Bonding - BONDING_OPTS=“mode=active-backup miimon=100 downdelay=2000 updelay=5000 num_grat_arp=100"

• Active / Active Bonding - BONDING_OPTS="mode=802.3ad miimon=100 downdelay=200 updelay=200 lacp_rate=1 xmit_hash_policy=layer3+4"

Ingest can be Active/Active with Replication Active/Passive, or vice-versa. Or both can have the same bonding.

The following diagram displays how the various Recovery Appliance components connect to the different networks.

Description of the illustration zdlra_network.png