RMAN’s Expanding Role in Database 10g

AdministrationMatthew Hart

July 2005

Agenda RMAN’s Traditional Role Putting backups to work Outside the recovery box RMAN and Oracle’s ‘irreducible complexity’ Enterprise Manager Integration What’s In 10gR1 What’s new in 10gR2 What’s coming this year

RMAN’s Traditional Role Backup

Access at the block level Access to the rdbms file data in the controlfile

Restore Access to the backup metadata Access to the database information

RMAN’s Traditional Role Recovery

Access to the controlfile Access to the backup metadata

Backup Management Machine Readable and enforceable backup

purging and backup retention

RMAN’s Traditional Role But what is it good for?

Simplifying backup work Less stress in bad situations Increasing availability

Putting Backups to Work Database Cloning

Duplicate Command Historical subsets

Disaster Recovery (Standby Creation) Duplicate for Physical Standby Use RMAN backups for Logical Standby (finally!)

RMAN and Irreducible Complexity This means that if you remove any single

part from a structure, the structure no longer functions.

RMAN: Beyond Backups Corruption Checking

Even if you don’t use RMAN for backups, use RMAN for corruption checking

rman target /rman> backup validate database

Use v$views to follow up with corruption reportedSelect * from v$database_block_corruption;

Check logical corruption:Backup validate database check logical;

RMAN: Beyond Backups Cross-Platform conversions

Finally replace burdensome export/import cycles Convert datafiles, tablespaces, or entire

databases (10gR2) Get the list of available ports with:

select * from v$transportable_platform

order by platform_id;

RMAN: Beyond BackupsPLATFORM_ID PLATFORM_NAME ENDIAN_FORMAT 1 Solaris[tm] OE (32-bit) Big 2 Solaris[tm] OE (64-bit) Big 3 HP-UX (64-bit) Big 4 HP-UX IA (64-bit) Big 5 HP Tru64 UNIX Little 6 AIX-Based Systems (64-bit) Big 7 Microsoft Windows IA (32-bit) Little 8 Microsoft Windows IA (64-bit) Little 9 IBM zSeries Based Linux Big 10 Linux IA (32-bit) Little 11 Linux IA (64-bit) Little 12 Microsoft Windows 64-bit for AMD Little 13 Linux 64-bit for AMD Little 15 HP Open VMS Little 16 Apple Mac OS Big 17 Solaris Operating System (x86) Little 18 IBM Power Based Linux Big 17 rows selected.

RMAN: Beyond Backups

ASM management and file transfer ASM can only be backed up with RMAN Transferring files into and out of ASM requires

RMAN As Oracle moves farther into disk management,

RMAN will be an integrated technology

RMAN: Beyond Backups

Flashback Database Use New 10g Structures to rewind the database

after user error RMAN is used for flashback operations Uses the Flash Recovery Area

RMAN 10gR1: Flash Recovery Area

Flash Recovery Area Means of using raw disk space as a backup area Can be on any file system, or ASM Consolidated ‘recovery file’ storage Required for Flashback Database

RMAN 10gR1: Flash Recovery Area What is a recovery file?

spfile Controlfile Online redo log file Datafile Archived log file Datafile copies RMAN Backupsets Incremental Backups Flashback logs

RMAN 10gR1: Flash Recovery Area

Flash Recovery Area: Allows for simple disk and space administration

via RMAN jobs and tasks Allows for simple disk to tape staging One less layer of scripting to build One more task for the DBA!

Is it Disk Management, or backup management?

Enterprise Manager Integration Functionality under the covers at different

locations Database Cloning Data Guard Configuration ASM Management Backup Management RMAN as functional API within the Oracle Stack

RMAN and RAC 10g Tighter Integration with RAC

Node affinity for backup jobs Automatic channel allocation at all nodes

(10gR2) Automatic channel failover in case of lost node

What’s Next: RMAN 10gR2 Database Version Control

RMAN introduces Restore Points Explicit named save points for restoring to Guaranteed save point exists outside retention

policy

Mostly useful for application development; but also extremely useful in application deployment/migration/upgrade testing

What’s Next: RMAN 10gR2 Backupset Encryption

Integrated with Advanced Security Option Can be validated with key encryption using an

Oracle Wallet, or with password

“Split Mirror” backups with Flashback + Incremental Apply

Scheduled validations via EM

What’s Next: RMAN 10gR2 Scheduled backup validations via EM Guided recovery in EM Advanced GUI Backup Reporting Enterprise-Wide Backup reporting in Grid

Control 10gR2

Oracle Secure Backup Fully integrated, straight to tape backups

without 3rd party vendor integration Configured and Administered via Enterprise

Manager The least expensive tape backup solution

on the market Database and OS system backup

Conclusions RMAN is still the best thing going for

backup/recovery As the technology moves toward greater

availability, RMAN’s functionality becomes more widely utilized

As availability leads to higher degrees of complexity, RMAN’s managability features become a necessity, not a luxury

Q&A Any questions?