“Actifio demonstrated ease of use and the restore speeds we needed. Integration with Oracle RMAN and vCenter were important and the Actifio customer service is awesome.”
TALICIA MCCANTS – SUPERVISOR OF IT SYSTEMS SUPPORT
Oracle Copy Data Management
Backup, Recovery, Cloning & Analytics for Oracle Databases & Applications
OVERVIEW
Actifio provides a single platform for backup, recovery, cloning and analytics for Oracle databases which reduces RPO, RTO and TCO – on-premises and in the cloud.
Enterprises create many copies of Oracle databases for use cases including backup, disaster recovery, test/dev, DevOps, analytics, reporting and more.
For all of these use cases, Actifio software provides a scalable, enterprise-grade Copy Data Management (CDM) solution. It manages Oracle database backups and copies of any size or flavor (RAC, ASM) efficiently and securely on-premises or in any public cloud.
Use Case
Modernize Oracle Backup & Recovery.
“Restore and recovery of a multi-TB Oracle database was quite a project that would take us a day-plus due to the complexity and the amount of data. But with Actifio, we’ve cut that to minutes. Actifio doesn’t just offer us an operational savings and the given safety net; it’s the speed to recovery, which for me, from a risk perspective, is what it’s all about.”
Todd Larson, CIO, Sentinel Benefits & Financial Group
Challenges
Recurring Full Backups
Many solutions force a recurring full Oracle RMAN backup at least once a week, if not daily. This impacts the production database performance, increases backup window and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
Large Recovery Time
With many legacy solutions, a point-in-time Oracle database recovery involves recovering from an Oracle RMAN full backup, applying incremental RMAN restores, followed by archive log restores. This whole process not only takes hours but also burdens the DBA with time, effort, and stress.
Large Database Cloning Time and Storage Costs
Dev, QA, UAT, analytics, & reporting teams need high fidelity clones of production Oracle databases. Legacy approaches lead to physical copies, thus increasing cloning time and storage costs. Moreover, there is no automated sensitive data masking, no self-service, and no role-based access control to database clones.
Very High Costs & RTO in the Cloud
In a public cloud such as AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM, users continue to use the approach of Oracle RMAN dump to disk and snapshot to object storage, which leads to very high storage costs. Moreover, recoveries from RMAN dumps on disk or snapshots are slow, leading to large RTO.
How Actifio Helps
Backup, Recover, and Clone, in just minutes, a complete multi-tier Oracle application including database, application, and middleware running in VMs, physical servers or any public cloud.
Reduce RPO
Actifio eliminates recurring full Oracle backups. It leverages Oracle RMAN Block Change Tracking to perform incremental forever backups with RMAN Image Copy and Merge, thus reducing RPO to minutes.
Reduce RTO
Recover 100TB Oracle databases in just minutes with Actifio’s unique instant mount and recovery technology.
Automated Log Management
Protect Oracle archive logs as frequently as every 15 minutes and recover to any point in time with automated log restores.
Oracle ASM Switch and Rebalance
After instant mount and recovery, migrate the live Oracle database to another storage tier without any downtime – with 1-click.
High-Performance
Instantly mount and recover Oracle databases over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or NFS with high performance.
Multi-Cloud Ready
Protect and recover Oracle databases, VMs, and physical servers in hybrid cloud or in any public cloud such as Oracle, AWS, Azure, GCP and IBM.
Reduce Costs using Cloud Object Storage
Store Oracle backups in inexpensive, high speed S3-compatible cloud object storage and recover instantly with direct mount from cloud object storage.
Wide Oracle Platform Support
Support for Exadata, Oracle RAC, ASM, File System, In-Memory, and Data Guard configurations.
Learn More: How Actifio Works for Oracle Backup & Recovery
Use Case
Accelerate Application Releases with Rapid Oracle Database Cloning
“We need to get data into the hands of our clients fast. We’re working closely with the federal government on real-time COVID-19 data, telling them which drugs are working, which drugs are not working, with the length of hospital stays and mortality rates. Thanks to Actifio, we are able to get the data into the government’s hands immediately to inform their decisions, leading to the development of more effective treatments.”
Kim Jaques, CIO, Sentry Data Systems
Challenges
Many Days to Provision Oracle Test Data
Manual processes for approvals, capturing data from production, scrubbing & subsetting – it costs days or even weeks to provision Oracle test data to DevOps and Analytics, introducing wait cycles and delays
Poor Performance
Some solutions can provision virtual Oracle database clones, consuming no extra storage, over NFS. However, it delivers poor performance either because of no Fibre Channel support or custom deduplication format.
Lack of Oracle ASM Support
Some solutions can capture data from Oracle ASM, but can NOT provision virtual DB clones to test environments with Oracle ASM, ending up with physical clones that waste time and storage.
Very High Costs
Some tools that can provision virtual Oracle database clones have very high license costs. And users still have to buy more point tools for backup, and disaster recovery. This increases the license & infrastructure costs.
How Actifio Helps
Clone your multi-TB OLTP and OLAP Oracle Databases in just minutes for Dev, QA, UAT, Analytics teams. Accelerate application testing, reporting and release cycles.
Reduce Oracle Database Cloning Time
Reuse backup copies to instantly provision dozens of rapid Oracle virtual database clones to any point-in-time for Dev/QA testing, analytics and reporting.
Reduce Storage Costs
Virtual Oracle database clones do not consume any extra storage. For example, 10 clones of a 10 TB Oracle DB can be provisioned without consuming any extra storage.
High-Performance
Provision Oracle virtual database clones over Fibre Channel for best performance. iSCSI and NFS are also supported.
High Availability
After instant mount and recovery, migrate the live Oracle database to another storage tier without any downtime – with 1-click.
Wide Oracle Platform Support
Supports provisioning virtual DB clones to Oracle RAC, ASM, file system, Exadata configurations. Also supported in Oracle OCI, AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM cloud.
Reduce License Costs
Use a single platform and license for backup, DR, and DB cloning for Test Data Management and manage on-premises and cloud instances from a single pane of glass.
Self-Service & CI/CD Integration
Dev, QA, UAT, Analytics users can provision virtual Oracle database clones in a self-service manner. Actifio can also be integrated into existing CI/CD pipelines via REST APIs.
Security
Administrators can specify role-based access controls (RBAC), encryption at rest and automate sensitive data masking using Actifio workflows.
Learn More: How Actifio Works for Oracle Database Cloning
Hear from enterprises doing it today:
Sentry Data Clones a 130TB Database 5x Almost Immediately
Sharp Electronics Modernizes Oracle Backup and Recovery
Frequently Asked Questions.
Every enterprise creates multiple copies of their production Oracle databases.
Commonly, Oracle DBAs use RMAN to dump backups to disk.
Backup Administrators backup these data sets to backup storage and replicate to a remote site for vaulting or disaster recovery purposes.
For low RPO and RTO DR, DBAs set up Oracle Data Guard replication.
Test/Dev, DevOps, Analytics, Security, UAT users need copies of production Oracle databases for testing purposes.
These siloed copies lead to copy data explosion resulting in very high infrastructure costs and operational burden. With no automation to manage these Oracle database copies, data provisioning for testers takes many weeks, stretching application test and release cycles.
Actifio’s VDP software platform solves this Copy Data Problem with its Copy Data Management (CDM) solution.
Yes. Actifio is an Oracle Platinum partner and is certified for RAC, ASM, Exadata, In-Memory, 12c support, including multi tenancy.
Actifio’s pricing model is very simple and easy to understand. It’s based on the amount of source data protected. For example: If an enterprise wants to use Actifio to protect 5 Oracle instances, each with 10 TB source database size, the enterprise would need Actifio license for 50 TB of source data. Enterprises can use this license anywhere in private or public cloud.
Actifio VDP is the patented core Virtual Data Pipeline technology that can be consumed in multiple form factors.
Actifio Sky is a VM appliance that runs Actifio VDP engine and can be provisioned in a public cloud VM or on-premises in VMware, Hyper-V VMs.
Actifio CDS/CDX is a physical appliance cluster that runs Actifio VDP engine with High Availability and is typically used on-premises.
Yes. Actifio supports all major public cloud providers such as Oracle, AWS, Azure, IBM, and Google. It’s also available in some of the public cloud marketplaces. Visit the Oracle Cloud Marketplace for more info.