Contributor: Frank Wickham
Now Introducing the Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance
A groundbreaking data protection solution that's completely integrated with Oracle Database and eliminates data loss exposure for all databases without impacting mission critical production environments.
What is the Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance
Oracle's Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (ZDLRA) or the Recovery Appliance (RA) is a new cloud-scale engineered system designed to dramatically eliminate data loss and reduce data protection overhead for all Oracle databases in the enterprise. Integrated with Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) and Recovery Manager (RMAN), it enables a centralized, incremental forever backup strategy for hundreds to thousands of databases in the enterprise, using cloud-scale, fully fault-tolerant hardware and storage. The appliance provides databases with sub-second recovery point objectives and continuously validates backups for assured recoverability of Oracle data. Oracle Enterprise Manager enables "single pane of glass" control of all administrative operations on the appliance, providing complete, end-to-end visibility of the Oracle backup lifecycle. Key features and benefits have been detailed.
The key components and workflow within the environment are shown below:
Key Features
- Real time redo transport
- Secure replication to a local or remote ZDLRA
- Autonomous tape archival
- End-to-end data validation, eliminating corruption of database backups
- Incremental forever backup strategy
- Storage space efficient virtual full backups
- Backup operations offload and managed by ZDLRA
- Flexibility and SLAs with database level protection policies
- Database-aware space management
- Cloud-scale Architecture
- Unified management and control via RMAN and Oracle Enterprise Manager
Key Benefits
- Eliminate Critical Data Loss, Shorter RPO
- Minimal Impact Backups, shorter backup windows
- Database Level Recoverability, Shorter RTO
- Cloud-scale Data Protection
Additional Resources
I have included some additional resources for you to review at your leisure. They include a variety of sources.
What are the Industry Analysts Saying about the ZDLRA
The Business Case for Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance, Business Benefits for Data Protection (PDF)
Technical Guide to Oracle's Recovery Appliance (PDF)
How will it fit into your existing IT architecture
The ZDLRA is integrated with Recovery Manager (RMAN) - at the heart of the system is an embedded Oracle Database, running Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), that serves as the centralized RMAN Recovery Catalog for all the protected databases. The catalog maintains all backup metadata in Automatic Storage Management (ASM) disk groups running on High Capacity disks in high redundancy mode. The backup data itself is also kept in ASM disk groups, in normal redundancy. The ZDLRA can be expanded by adding compute and storage capacity to a base configuration or adding additional racks.
Backup connectivity into and out of the system is provided through standard 10GigE and InfiniBand ports. For tape archival operations, the appliance comes with pre-installed Oracle Secure Backup (OSB) media management software and a 16 Gb Fibre Channel Card on each compute server to connect directly to tape hardware. Alternatively, other vendors' tape backup agents may be deployed on the ZDLRA for integration with an organizations existing enterprise tape backup software and processes. In this configuration, the agents must connect to their specialized media servers that are deployed external to the appliance.
Be Secure!
--Frank