Oracle Database Backup and Recovery

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 the public cloud or on-premises.

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 leading public cloud marketplaces.

Following are the key comparisons:

1. Full vs Incremental forever backup for Oracle databases: Legacy vendors perform recurring full backups while Actifio performs app consistent incremental forever backups using RMAN APIs.
2. Large vs Instant recovery time: RTO with legacy vendors is large because of restoring from their proprietary backup format. Compare this with Actifio’s instant recovery where it can recover even a 100 TB Oracle database in just minutes.
3. Lack of automated test data management for DevOps: Legacy vendors don’t have a self-service, storage-efficient,  automated test data management to create Oracle database clones. Compare this with Actifio which reuses its backups to provision database clones in just minutes with self-service and automation.

Following are the key comparisons:

1. Low vs High Performance post instant recovery: While mounting backups from deduplication appliances might be instant, the deduplication format on commodity storage impacts the IO performance significantly. Users just can’t run mission-critical Oracle databases from such appliances. Compare this with Actifio which stores backups in its native Oracle format on any storage tier, thus delivering the raw native performance of the underlying storage.
2. Complexity vs Simplicity for Oracle ASM environments: Recovery of data from deduplication appliances is labor intensive resulting a lengthy process to get data back to production ASM environments. Actifio natively supports ASM which enables users to automate the Oracle database recovery to ASM storage with zero downtime.
3. None vs High flexibility for storage and storage protocols: With deduplication appliance vendors users are locked into whatever storage the vendor’s supply and typically the only interface supported is NFS. Compare this with Actifio which allows users to specify any storage vendor with the right performance metrics, thus eliminating storage vendor lock-in. Moreover, users have complete flexibility to backup, recover, and mount over Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS protocols.
4. Lack of automated test data management for DevOps: Deduplication appliance vendors don’t offer a self-service, storage-efficient,  automated test data management. Compare this with Actifio which reuses backups to provision database clones in just minutes with self-service and automation.
5. High vs Low Cloud TCO: The scaleout deduplication appliance vendors support very few public cloud providers. They also need a very large amount of compute to protect cloud resident Oracle workloads with a minimum of 3-4 node clusters, thus driving up the cloud costs. Compare that with Actifio which needs very small compute to protect Oracle workloads, leverages cloud block and/or object storage and even delivers instant recovery from cloud object storage.

Yes. Actifio leverages Oracle’s native Block Change Tracking (BCT) technology to capture just the changed blocks in its incremental forever backups. After the first backup, which is an Image Copy (RMAN ‘BACKUP AS COPY’), Actifio does an incremental backup and incremental merge.

For more details on how Actifio works for Oracle, check out this solution brief.

Yes. Backup admin or DBA can setup SLAs in such a way that archive logs can be backed up every X minutes or hours in between the incremental backups. For example, a user can setup incremental backups every 4 hours and log backups every 15 minutes.

During recoveries, a user can specify any point-in-time. Actifio automatically identifies the nearest incremental point-in-time, mounts a synthetic virtual full copy instantly as of that point-in-time, and applies the archive logs to recover the Oracle database to the specified point-in-time. All of this is fully automated.

Actifio stores the Oracle backups in native Oracle format. This ensures that, after instant mount and recovery, there is no performance overhead because of format conversion.

The other factor to consider is the storage on which the Oracle backups are stored by Actifio.

Depending on the performance requirements after instant recovery or provisioning database clones to test/dev users, enterprises can specify the right storage tier to use with Actifio.

And lastly, Actifio also offers the flexibility to instantly mount and recover over Fibre Channel or iSCSI or NFS depending upon the user preference.

Thus the performance can be as good as the underlying storage and the protocol the user wants to use.

Check out this solution brief.

Yes. Actifio integrates with Oracle Data Guard and provides the flexibility to protect from either the primary or the standby database.

It also integrates with Exadata and stores the Oracle backups on any external storage. Instant recoveries can be performed from these backups?

Actifio not only protects Oracle ASM environments but also offers a very unique recovery of Oracle capability for ASM environments. Once an instant mount and recovery is complete, Actifio can trigger an ASM Rebalance to migrate data seamlessly from Actifio backups to ASM disk groups on production storage without any downtime.

For more details on how Actifio works for Oracle ASM, check out this solution brief for Oracle ASM.