Book Image

Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide

Book Image

Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide

Overview of this book

The three main responsibilities of a successful DBA are to ensure the availability, recoverability, and performance of any database. To ensure the recoverability of any database, a DBA needs to have a strong backup and recovery skills set. Every DBA is always looking for a reference book that will help them to solve any possible backup and recovery situation that they can come across in their professional life. Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide has the unique advantage to be a reference to all Oracle backup and recovery options available, making it essential for any DBA in the world. If you are new to Oracle Database, this book will introduce you to the fantastic world of backup and recovery that is vital to your success. If you are an experienced DBA, this book will become a reference guide and will also help you to learn some possible new skills, or give you some new ideas you were never aware about. It will also help you to easily find the solution to some of the most well known problems you could find during your career as a DBA. This book contains useful screenshots, scripts, and examples that you will find more than useful. Most of the books currently available in the market concentrate only on the RMAN utility to backup and recovery. This book will be an exception to the rule and will become a must-have reference, allowing you to design a real and complete backup and recovery strategy. It covers the most important topics on Oracle database such as backup strategies, Nologging operations, new features in 12c, user managed backups and recoveries, RMAN (including reporting, catalog management, troubleshooting, and performance tuning), advanced data pump, Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c and SQL Developer. "Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide" contains everything a DBA needs to know to keep data safe and recoverable, using real-life scenarios.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Oracle Database 12c Backup and Recovery Survival Guide
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Backup strategies


A backup and recovery strategy has the main purpose of protecting a database against data loss, and this document will contain all steps required to reconstruct the database after a disaster strikes. As the person responsible for the data of your company, it is very important to have a correct backup strategy in place to allow you to recover from any possible disaster.

Before you create a strategy, you will need to understand clearly all the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in place with in your organization regarding this topic. To that end, you will need to ask some simple questions to the owners of the data:

  • How much data can the company lose in case of a disaster? (RPO)

  • How much time could the business wait to have the data restored and available again? (RTO)

  • How much will it cost the company for the loss of one hour of data?

  • What retention periods are required by law for the company data?

After receiving the answers to all these questions, you will be able to implement a proper backup and recovery strategy according to your real company needs and SLAs in place.

For example, if your company can only afford to lose three hours of data (RPO) but it can have the database down for up to 24 hours for a recovery process (RTO), all you will need to do to fulfill your SLA is to have a full backup of your database made daily. You will also need to make backups of all your archive logs every three hours to a tape or another network location to allow you to have all your data protected.

As part of creating a strategy, it is important to properly understand the concepts known as Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). As you can see in the following figure, the RPO reflects how much data might be lost without incurring a significant risk or loss to the business, and the RTO is basically the maximum amount of time allowed to reestablish the service after an incident without affecting the company seriously.