We are excited to announce general availability of Oracle Database Zero Data Loss Autonomous Recovery Service (ZRCV) support for Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure (ExaDB-D) and Oracle Base Database (BaseDB) Service. This includes unique cloud database protection capabilities such as zero data loss recovery point objectives, end-to-end backup encryption, incremental forever backup paradigm, continuous database recovery validation, and in-depth database recoverability monitoring.
The Recovery Service is easily enabled with a user selection in the OCI Console – no special configuration is required on the existing ExaDB-D or BaseDB database services.
Key Customer Benefits
- Provides Zero data loss with real-time database protection which enables recovery to within less than a second of an outage or ransomware attack
- Helps prevent data deletion and alteration with a minimum 14-day backup retention. All backup data is also automatically encrypted throughout the entire lifecycle.
- Achieve higher operational efficiency by eliminating the need for weekly full backups – this can reduce the CPU, memory, and I/O overhead when running backups, which in turn can help lower overall database cloud costs.
- Shorten the backup window with an incremental forever paradigm that moves smaller amounts of backup data between the database and the Recovery Service
- Improve recoverability with automated, zero-impact recovery validation for every database backup
- Recover faster with offloaded backup optimization which eliminate the need to recover multiple incremental backups
- Gain deep database protection insights with a granular recovery health dashboard
Customer Experience
The following sections highlight the workflows for configuring automatic backups with Recovery Service, the tasks automation performs for you, and the backup details now available in the OCI console.
Configure automatic backups when creating a Database
Navigate to the VM Cluster page from the OCI console menu by selecting Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure → Exadata VM Clusters → Exadata VM Cluster Details and click on the Create database option to create a new database. As part of the creation workflow, choose Enable automatic backups and select Autonomous Recovery Service as the backup destination.
Options available when Autonomous Recovery Service is selected as the backup destination:
- Protection Policy – Specifies the amount of time to retain backups for the recovery window of the protected database. You can choose from one of the default protection policies or create a custom policy to specify the desired backup recovery window.
- Real-time data protection – Enables zero data loss recovery, reducing potential data loss to within less than a second of when an outage or ransomware attack occurs. This is an extra-cost option.
- Deletion options after database termination:
- Retain backups according to the protection policy retention period - After you terminate a database, Recovery Service will continue to retain backups for the period defined in the associated protection policy.
- Retain backups for 72 hours, then delete - Recovery Service will retain backups for a period of 72 hours (3 days) after you terminate a database.
- Scheduled time for the daily backup – specifies the start time window when the daily backup will be performed. Selecting “Take the first backup immediately” will create a backup during database provision and subsequent backups will follow the scheduled time window.
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Cloud automation does the configuration work
When automatic backups are enabled, the Recovery Service and database automation work in conjunction to ensure secure communication is established and backup jobs are scheduled. These are some of the tasks performed by the automation:
- A backup storage location is selected – There is a fleet of hardware available to store backups and the automation selects a location with appropriate capacity.
- Network paths are established – Multiple private endpoints are created to provide a secure and highly available network path between the virtual cloud network (VCN) subnet and the backup storage infrastructure.
- Unique backup credentials are created – Each database in the tenancy uses a unique set of credentials for backup and restore operations, enforcing separation of duties between databases, even in the same tenancy and compartment.
- Backups configured for encryption – Backup data is encrypted at source and in-transit via encrypted connections with Transport Later Security (TLS).
- Backup jobs are created and scheduled based on the settings supplied during automatic backup configuration.
- Real-time protection configured – If this option is selected, the database is configured with a redo destination to the Recovery Service, where transactional changes are captured and made available for database recovery purposes.
View backup details for the database
Once the backup has been configured, you can view the details in the Backup section on the Database details page.
You can view additional details about database protection including:
- Automatic backup: Indicates whether the database uses automatic backups.
- Health: Indicates the protection status of the database in Recovery Service. The displayed values are: Protected, Warning, and Alert.
- Protected - database recovery is available to any point in time within the entire recovery window, and the potential data loss exposure since the last backup is less than 10 seconds (if real-time data protection is enabled) or less than 70 minutes (if real-time data protection is disabled).
- Warning - database recovery is available to any point in time within the current recovery window, but the potential data loss exposure since the last backup is greater than 10 seconds (if real-time data protection is enabled) or greater than 70 minutes (if real-time data protection is disabled).
- Alert - recovery of the database to any point-in-time within the current recovery window is not possible, due to a backup failure.
- Data loss exposure: Potential data loss window since the last backup was taken.
- Last failed backup: The date and time of the most recent failed backup within the defined retention period defined in the policy.
- Last completed backup: The date and time of the most recent successful backup.
- Next scheduled backup: The time window of the next scheduled backup.
- Space used for recovery window: The amount of storage space that is currently used to meet the recovery window for the protected database.
- Backup destination: Indicates that the database sends backups to Recovery Service.
- Real-time data protection: Indicates whether zero data loss recovery is enabled, and real-time redo is being sent from the protected database to Recovery Service.
- Protection policy: The protection policy defines the maximum period to retain the backups created for the database. Click Edit Policy to view the Configure automatic backups pane and change the protection policy.
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You can navigate to the protected database page by clicking the Autonomous Recovery Service link. This page provides additional backup details of the specified database.
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Once you view the protected database details, if you wish to return to the Database details page, click on the "Database details: <database name>" link to be taken back to the database homepage.
Transitioning your backup destination from Object Storage to Recovery Service
You can transition automatic backups between Object Storage and Recovery Service after the database has been created by clicking on the Configure automatic backups link on the database details page and changing the backup destination.
When automatic backups are transitioned, previous backups are maintained for the retention time selected for the previous backups. Historical backups are removed when they expire, and new backups will be retained in the new destination. If a recovery is needed the automation will use the backups appropriate for the selected recovery time.
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Considerations
- Real-time data protection is an extra cost option. Consult the OCI cloud estimator tool to understand options.
- Autonomous Recovery Service is supported for database version 19.16 and later, and the real-time data protection option is supported on versions 19.18 and later. Consult the service documentation for more details.
Availability
This feature is now available in all OCI commercial regions for Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure and Oracle Base Database Service.
For more information