Figure 1-1 illustrates the Recovery Appliance environment. Multiple protected databases are backed up to a Recovery Appliance using an incremental-forever backup strategy. You can also configure protected databases to transfer real-time redo data to the Recovery Appliance. The Recovery Appliance environment can include protected databases from Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Database 11g, and Oracle Database 12c. To enable protected databases to access and store backups to the Recovery Appliance, you must configure databases.

The Recovery Appliance receives incremental backups and redo data from multiple protected databases. It continuously validates backups at the Oracle block level thus assuring recoverability of data. Backups are compressed to optimize storage utilization before they are stored in the delta store. The delta store is the sum total of all Recovery Appliance storage that is used to store protected database backup data. All data file and archived redo log backups are stored in the delta store. Recovery Appliance creates virtual full backups of the protected database, which is a complete database image as of one distinct point in time.

The Recovery Appliance metadata database is the Oracle database that runs inside of the Recovery Appliance. It stores configuration data such as definitions, protection policy definitions, and client database definitions. The metadata database also stores backup metadata and contains the Recovery Appliance catalog.

Oracle Secure Backup, the tape management component of Recovery Appliance, is preinstalled on the Recovery Appliance and is used to archive backups to an attached tape library.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (Cloud Control) provides a unified backup management interface for the entire life cycle of backups. You can use Cloud Control to back up, recover, and report on protected databases.

As part of the disaster recovery strategy, Recovery Appliance can replicate protected database backups to other Recovery Appliances. When you configure replication, a Recovery Appliance (called the upstream Recovery Appliance) forwards backups to another Recovery Appliance (called the downstream Recovery Appliance). Recovery Appliance supports a wide variety of replication topologies.