In my previous post, I showed how the clone to tape occurs for ZDLRA. But as explained, the clones occur through the scheduler and follow some rules. For full backup, as an example, it clones the last available.
But sometimes, it is needed to call the clone for some specific backup, maybe to do long-term storage to follow some regimentation/law. And if we leverage this for the clone, jobs can maybe take to long, or clone more that you need.
As you saw in my last post, the configuration to enable clone to tape for ZDLRA it is not complicated, but you need to take care of some details to avoid errors. Besides that, ZDLRA relies on OSB to do that (when configured with native tape support) and this has some details that you need to be aware of.
In this post, I will show how the clone to tape works for ZDLRA. And how you can check some details about OSB.
With ZDLRA you can clone your backups to tape using two ways. The first is using third-party software and the second is using Oracle Secure Backup (OSB). This integration from ZDLRA and OSB is the native way to do that.
Cloning backups to tape will help to offload backups from ZDLRA (reducing the space usage if you need to sustain long recovery windows), and add another layer of protection (since you can put tapes in a third site).
Here I will show how easy is to configure the OSB backup and how to integrate it into your backup policy.
For ZDLRA the protection policies have a significant role in the appliance management, but not just that, for the architecture design too. And usually (and unfortunately) policies do not take a lot of attention as deserved.
To create a good ZDLRA design, and avoid future problems, it is important to understand all the requirements for the protection policies and all the impacts. You can check the official documentation for this, but I will explain deeply the details that can pass without you notice them in the documentation.
ZDLRA can be used from a small single database environment to big environments where you need protection in more than one site at the same time. At every level, you can use different features of ZDLRA to provide desirable protection. Here I will show how to reach zero RPO for both primary and standby databases. All the steps, doc, and tech parts are covered.
You can check the examples the reference for every scenario int these two papers from the Oracle MAA team: MAA Overview On-Premises and Oracle MAA Reference Architectures. They provide good information on how to prepare to reduce RPO and improve RTO. In resume, the focus is the same, reduce the downtime and data loss in case of a catastrophe (zero RPO, and zero RPO).
If you looked both papers before, you saw that to provide good protection is desirable to have an additional site to, at least, send the backups. And if you go higher, for GOLD and PLATINUM environments, you start to have multiple sites synced with data guard. These Critical/Mission-critical environments need to be protected for every kind of catastrophic failure, from disk until complete site outage (some need to follow specific law’s requirements, bank as an example).
And the focus of this post is these big environments. I will show you how to use ZDLRA to protect both sites, reaching zero RPO even for standby databases. And doing that, you can survive for a catastrophic outage (like entire datacenter failure) and still have zero RPO. Going further, you can even have zero RPO if you lose completely on site when using real-time redo for ZDLRA, and this is not written in the docs by the way.
For ZDLRA, the task type INDEX_BACKUP it is important (if it is not the most) because it is responsible to create the virtual full backup. This task runs for every backup that you ingest at ZDLRA and here, I will show with more details what occurs at ZDLRA: internals steps, phases, and tables involved.
I recommend that you check my previous post about ZDLRA: ZDLRA Internals, Tables and Storage, ZDLRA, Virtual Full Backup and Incremental Forever, and Understanding ZDLRA. They provide a good base to understand some aspects of ZDLRA architecture and features.
As you saw in my previous post, ZDLRA opens every backup that you sent and read every block of it to generate one new virtual full backup. And this backup is validated block a block (physically and logically) against corruption. It differs from a snapshot because it is content-aware (in this case it is proprietary Oracle datafile blocks inside another proprietary Oracle rman block) and Oracle it is the only that can do this guaranteeing that result is valid.
One of the most knows features of ZDLRA is the virtual full backup, basically incremental forever strategy. But what this means in real life? In this post, I will show some details about that and how interesting they are, check what it is Virtual Full Backup and Incremental Forever strategy for ZDLRA.
This post is based on my previous one where I showed all the steps to configure the VPC and enroll database at ZDLRA.
A virtual full backup appears as an incremental level 0 backup in the recovery catalog. From the user’s perspective, a virtual full backup is indistinguishable from a non-virtual full backup. Using virtual backups, Recovery Appliance provides the protection of frequent level 0 backups with only the cost of frequent level 1 backups.
This definition (and image) are in the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance Administrator’s Guide and I think that represents the essence of the virtual full backup. ZDLRA receive the incremental level 1 backup, index it, and generate a level 0 to you that it is indistinguishable from a normal backup level 0.
Allocate channel for RMAN is used in various scenarios, most of the time is useful when you use tape as device type or you need to use some kind of format. The way to do the allocation not changed since a long time ago, but when you run the database in container mode you can hit a bug that turns your channel unusable. I will show you the bug and how to avoid it with a simple trick.
This bug hit every version since 12 and I discovered it last year when testing some scenarios, but I was able to test and post just recently. It just occurs for CDB databases and exists just one one-off solution published for 12.2. But there is one workaround more useful and works for every version.
The most interesting part is that everything that we made until now when allocate channel will not work. You can search in all doc available for allocate channel since 9i until 19c the first thing that you made after open the run{} is allocate channel. This is the default and recommended in the docs: for 19c, 18c, and 9i.
Este artigo é o primeiro de uma série sobre Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA), com os passos, dicas e afins para configurar e manter um ambiente deste porte. No final da série teremos um ambiente com Oracle RAC tanto no primary quanto no standby. Ambos sincronizados com Data Guard (DG) rodando em alta disponibilidade.
Não é a intenção aqui mostrar com configurar um ambiente RAC, já partirei de um ambiente com o RAC instalado e um banco rodando. Utilizarei o Oracle 11GR2 versão 11.2.0.3, já que a intenção também é mostrar como atualizar um ambiente em DG. Além disso, tentarei cobrir alguns pontos como “real-time apply” e criação do banco standby usando Media Management Layer (MML).
Tentarei ser o mais didático e claro possível e caso tenha alguma dúvida, pergunte. Todos os comandos que executei estarão no artigo. Infelizmente este primeiro artigo será extenso (muito) e cheio de detalhes técnicos, não tem como montar um ambiente assim de forma rápida e sem os diversos detalhes envolvidos. Infelizmente não existe um guia rápido de 10 passos para MAA com RAC, isso não existe. Você verá aqui um guia detalhado do início ao fim sobre como configurar MAA com RAC em ambos os lados.
Provavelmente alguns passos utilizados aqui para a configuração do ambiente podem ser mais simples na prática. Espero no final cobrir boa parte de um ambiente DG e MAA: switchover, failover, reisntate, broker, observer e afins.
Uma configuração como esta seria a aplicada em um ambiente Exadata que necessita de alta disponibilidade. Você teria que configurar MAA com DG entre dois Exadatas, como é RAC seria um DG sobre RAC.
PRIMEIRO ARTIGO
Neste primeiro artigo iremos configurar um ambiente DG em dois sites, somente o banco será replicado. Neste artigo não iremos ver a configuração do Broker nem failover, switchover e reinstate; isso ficará para próximos artigos.