Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance: Just databases?

One of the big announcements at Oracle OpenWorld was the new “Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance” or ODBLRA. This does sound like an interesting announcement with one big gap: everything outside the database. As an example, let’s use the Oracle’s E-Business suite which is comprised of:

• Oracle database server
  • Oracle Home directory (ORACLE_HOME)
  • All database files
• Applications Top (APPL_TOP): applications files
• Common Top (APPL_TOP): shared files

Certainly, there is more to the E-Business directory architecture however; the database is only one component of the overall application. In my years as an Oracle Applications DBA there were more than a few times we had to restore from a backup. The job of restoring the entire application suite was simple if the database and application files were in a consistent state. If the application are in an inconsistent state then the Application DBA might have to run scripts like ‘CMCLEAN.SQL’ (My Oracle Support Article: 134007.1) and of course there are other caches (My Oracle Support Article 742107.1) like the $OA_HTML and the ‘mod_plsql’ directory under the $IAS_ORACLE_HOME/Apache/modplsql/cache directory. Adding these steps lengthens the application recovery time and that’s important as the business most likely will not recognize a full recovery has been achieved until the application is available.

Having the database backed up to the ODBLRA appliance and the applications backed up to another destination could mean an unnecessarily complex restore process and  restoring the applications environment to a consistent state may not be possible without some of the additional steps discussed above.  This might also require two backup administers to restore one copy of the applications. All this could lengthen the overall recovery of the application. Please keep in mind that I wasn’t able to find documentation for ODBLRA so the key assumption of having to use two backup solutions to restore the E-Business suite couldn’t be validated. Most of the benefits of the ODBLRA are here today with Data Domain and if you want true active/active availability without having to do a recovery, because sometimes seconds matter, then consider EMC VPLEX with Extended Oracle RAC.

So would you consider using two backup solutions?