Add a protection policy for Oracle database protection
Use the
PowerProtect Data Manager UI to add a protection policy to protect the Oracle databases.
Prerequisites
For each database that you add as an asset in a protection policy, ensure that the database has only one hostname. A single database must not have more than one hostname.
When you create protection policies for RAC databases, ensure that all nodes in the RAC environment are powered on and registered at the time of the protection policy creation. Otherwise the protection might fail.
For Oracle Instance Group assets, ensure that the maximum length of the hostname plus storage unit is 59. There are no special character limitations. For example, oracle_database_department_123_accounts.
Before you perform a backup on a weekly or monthly schedule from the protection policy, ensure that the
PowerProtect Data Manager time zone is set to the local time zone. If the
PowerProtect Data Manager time zone is not set to the local time zone, the weekly or monthly backup still runs but is triggered based on the
PowerProtect Data Manager time zone.
If applicable, complete all of the virtual network configuration tasks before you assign any virtual networks to the protection policy. The
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides more information.
NOTE: PowerProtect Data Manager does not support the automatic retention lock (ARL) setting on the
DD system. The option to create a storage unit during protection policy configuration does not support compliance mode retention locking, only governance mode. To use compliance mode retention locking, create and configure a storage unit before you configure an associated protection policy. If you enable retention locking and select a storage unit where the retention lock mode is
None, the retention lock defaults to governance mode. The
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides more information.
Steps
From the left navigation pane, select
Protection > Protection Policies.
The
Protection Policies window appears.
In the
Protection Policies window, click
Add.
The
Add Policy wizard appears.
On the
Type page, specify the following fields, and then click
Next:
Name—Type a descriptive name for the protection policy.
Description—Type a description for the policy.
Type—Select
Oracle, and then select either
Application Direct backup or
Oracle Incremental Merge backup.
On the
Purpose page, select from the following options to indicate the purpose of the new protection policy group, and then click
Next:
Centralized Protection—Select this option to use
PowerProtect Data Manager to centrally manage all
objectives of the protection policy.
Centralized protection means that
PowerProtect Data Manager schedules the backups and manages the life cycle of the copies.
Click
Set Credentials to specify new credentials or select existing credentials from the list.
NOTE: Policy-level credentials are mandatory. Credentials that you set at the asset level and host level take precedence over the credentials that you set at the protection policy level. Asset-level credentials have the highest precedence.
Self-Service Protection—Select this option to use Oracle to create local backup protection.
PowerProtect Data Manager creates a protection policy and manages extra
objectives.
Self-service protection means that DBAs schedule the backups but
PowerProtect Data Manager discovers and manages the life cycle of the copies.
Exclusion—Select this type if there are assets within the protection policy that you plan to exclude from data protection operations.
On the
Asset Groups page, select one or more Data Guard asset groups to be protected by the policy, if applicable, and then click
Next.
NOTE: For an Oracle Incremental Merge policy, click
Next on the
Asset Groups page without selecting any asset groups. Oracle Incremental Merge supports Data Guard in stand-alone mode only, not in federated mode. You can only use Oracle Incremental Merge backups to back up the Data Guard databases individually.
In stand-alone mode, each Data Guard database is protected separately as an independent asset. In federated mode, a Data Guard asset group is protected by using a protection strategy of either primary mode or standby mode:
Primary mode—The backup is scheduled on the primary production database. During a failover,
PowerProtect Data Manager automatically schedules the backup on the new primary database.
Standby mode—The backup is scheduled on the physical standby database, based on availability and the preference setting. If the asset group includes multiple standby databases, you can set a rank for each standby database, based on preference. The backup is scheduled on the highest ranked standby database. During a failover,
PowerProtect Data Manager automatically schedules the backup on the next highest ranked standby database.
When you select an asset group that is not yet assigned a primary or standby mode, the group is assigned the primary mode by default. To change the mode of an asset group, perform one of the following actions:
Click
Set Protection Strategy, and select
Primary Mode or
Standby Mode in the dialog.
Click the tag next to the group name on the
Asset Groups page, and select the mode from the displayed list.
In the
Set Protection Strategy dialog, when you select
Standby Mode and the asset group includes multiple physical standby databases, the
Select Priority Items page appears. On the page, you can set the backup ranking for each standby database, which determines the order in which the standby databases are backed up.
On the
Assets page, select the unprotected assets that you want to add to the backup of this protection policy group. The window enables you to filter by asset name to locate the required assets.
You can also change the assets view to display all assets that are discovered by
PowerProtect Data Manager or a hierarchical view with the assets in a tree structure underneath the application host. For example, a hierarchical view can be helpful when you have added multiple Oracle databases, so that you can more easily identify which assets belong to which database.
For an Oracle Incremental Merge policy, you can select
Set Protocol on the
Assets page to set or change the protocol assigned to any selected assets. If BoostFS is installed on the system, then BoostFS is the default protocol. Otherwise, the default protocol is NFS.
Click
Next.
If you selected
Exclusion on the
Purpose page, the
Summary page appears. Go to
Step 15.
If you selected
Centralized Protection or
Self-Service Protection on the
Purpose page, the
Objectives page appears for creating the protection policy backup configuration.
On the
Objectives page, select a policy-level Service Level Agreement (SLA) from the
Set Policy Level SLA list, or select
Add to open the
Add Policy Service Level Agreement wizard and create a policy-level SLA.
Complete the required steps for the specified type of protection policy group:
For
Centralized Protection:
Click
Add under
Primary Backup.
The
Add Primary Backup dialog appears.
On the
Target pane of the
Add Primary Backup dialog, specify the following fields:
Storage Name—Select a backup destination from the list of existing DD systems, or select
Add to add a system and complete the details in the
Storage Target dialog.
Storage Unit—Select whether this protection policy should use a
New storage unit on the selected DD system, or select an existing storage unit from the list. Hover over a storage unit to view the full name and statistics for available capacity and total capacity, for example,
testvmpolicy-ppdm-daily-123ab (300 GB/1 TB).
When you select
New, a new storage unit in the format
policy namehostnameunique identifier is created in the storage system upon policy completion, for example,
testvmpolicy-ppdm-daily-123cd.
NOTE: The
Space field indicates the total amount of space, and the percentage of available space, on the storage system.
Network Interface—Select a network interface from the list, if applicable.
Retention Lock—Move the
Retention Lock slider to the right to enable retention locking for these backups.
The retention lock mode setting comes from the configuration of the selected storage unit. When you enable retention locking, the
Retention Lock Mode field displays the corresponding storage unit setting.
Setting a retention lock applies to the current backup copy only, and does not impact the retention lock setting for existing backup copies.
SLA—Select an existing service level agreement that you want to apply to this schedule from the list, or select
Add to create an SLA within the
Add Backup Service Level Agreement wizard.
On the
Schedules pane of the
Add Primary Backup dialog, complete the following settings for Application Direct backups:
Specify the following fields to schedule the full backup of this protection policy:
Create a Full backup every—Specify how often to create a full backup.
Retain for—Specify the retention period for the full backup.
NOTE: For database backups,
PowerProtect Data Manager chains the dependent backups together. For example, the incremental or transaction log backups are chained to their base full backup. The backups do not expire until the last backup in the chain expires. As a result, all incremental and transaction log backups are recoverable until they have all expired.
Start and
End—The activity window. Specify a time of day to start the full backup, and a time of day after which backups cannot be started.
NOTE: Any backups started before the
End Time occurs continue until completion.
Click
Add Backup if you want to add an incremental cumulative, incremental differential, or log backup. Then specify the following fields to schedule the backup of this protection policy:
NOTE: When you select this option, the backup chain is reset.
Create a
<backup_type> backup every—For
<backup_type>, select
Incremental Cumulative,
Incremental Differential, or
Log from the drop-down list, and then specify the interval at which the backup job runs within the window that you specify. The backup interval depends on the backup interval of the full backup schedule:
If the full backup schedule is hourly or daily, the backup interval of subsequent backup levels can be between 1 and 12 hours or between 1 and 60 minutes.
If the full backup schedule is weekly or monthly, the backup interval of subsequent backup levels can be daily, between 1 and 12 hours, or between 1 and 60 minutes.
Retain for—Specify the retention period for the backup.
CAUTION: If you set a shorter retention period for an incremental or log backup than for the corresponding full backup, data loss might occur and you might be unable to recover the point-in-time copies.
Start and
End—The activity window. Specify a time of day to start the backup, and a time of day after which backups cannot be started.
NOTE: Any backups started before the
End Time occurs continue until completion.
Click
Add Backup and repeat the procedure for creating full backups if you want to create additional backup copies at different intervals with different retention periods.
Within this protection policy, when a full schedule conflicts with another full backup schedule, a message appears, indicating that there is a conflict. Schedule occurrences can conflict with each other when the activity windows are identical or occur entirely within the same time range. To avoid full schedule conflicts in a policy, edit the activity windows. If you proceed with conflicting schedules, the backup of the lower priority schedule will be skipped. Schedule priority is ranked according to the following criteria:
In the case of multiple full schedules, the full schedule with the longest retention period has a higher priority than the other full schedules.
For schedules of the same backup type, the schedules that run less frequently have a higher priority than schedules that run more frequently.
For schedules with the same backup type and frequency, the schedule with the longest activity window has the higher priority. If the activity windows are also identical, only one of these schedules will run.
NOTE: When a schedule conflict between full backups occurs,
PowerProtect Data Manager runs the full backup with the longest retention period.
On the
Schedules pane of the
Add Primary Backup dialog, complete the following settings for Oracle Incremental Merge backups:
In the field
Retain incremental pieces for
<number><days_or_weeks>, specify the number of days or weeks that the incremental backup pieces are retained. The default retention period is 7 days. The maximum retention period is 28 days.
Specify the following fields to schedule the full or synthetic backup of this protection policy:
Create a
<backup_type> backup every—For
<backup_type>, select
Full or
Synthetic Full from the drop-down list, and then specify the interval at which the backup job runs within the window that you specify.
NOTE:
It is recommended that you periodically run a full Oracle Incremental Merge backup. Also, when synthetic full backups are part of the protection policy, ensure you run a manual full backup in the following cases:
You move an asset from one policy to a second policy, where the second policy has only a
Synthetic Full schedule.
The backups fail continuously at the catalog merge steps.
When you select
Synthetic Full, the first backup performed for the protection policy is a full backup and all subsequent backups are synthetic full backups. When a synthetic full backup is scheduled to run but a full backup does not exist, a full backup runs instead.
Retain for—Specify the retention period for the full or synthetic full backup.
Start and
End—The activity window. Specify a time of day to start the full or synthetic full backup, and a time of day after which backups cannot be started.
NOTE: Any backups started before the
End Time occurs continue until completion.
Click
Add Backup if you want to add a full, synthetic full, or log backup. Then specify the following fields to schedule the backup of this protection policy:
NOTE: When you select this option, the backup chain is reset.
Create a
<backup_type> backup every—For
<backup_type>, select
Full,
Synthetic Full, or
Log from the drop-down list, and then specify the interval at which the backup job runs within the window that you specify. The backup interval depends on the backup interval of the full backup schedule:
If the full backup schedule is hourly or daily, the backup interval of subsequent backup levels can be between 1 and 12 hours or between 1 and 60 minutes.
If the full backup schedule is weekly or monthly, the backup interval of subsequent backup levels can be daily, between 1 and 12 hours, or between 1 and 60 minutes.
Retain for—Specify the retention period for the backup.
CAUTION: If you set a shorter retention period for a log backup than for the corresponding full or synthetic full backup, data loss might occur and you might be unable to recover the point-in-time copies.
Start and
End—The activity window. Specify a time of day to start the backup, and a time of day after which backups cannot be started.
NOTE: Any backups started before the
End Time occurs continue until completion.
Click
Add Backup and repeat the procedure for creating full backups if you want to create additional backup copies at different intervals with different retention periods.
Within this protection policy, when a full schedule conflicts with another full backup schedule, a message appears, indicating that there is a conflict. Schedule occurrences can conflict with each other when the activity windows are identical or occur entirely within the same time range. To avoid full schedule conflicts in a policy, edit the activity windows. If you proceed with conflicting schedules, the backup of the lower priority schedule will be skipped. Schedule priority is ranked according to the following criteria:
Full schedules have a higher priority than Synthetic Full schedules.
For schedules of the same backup type, the schedules that run less frequently have a higher priority than schedules that run more frequently.
For schedules with the same backup type and frequency, the schedule with the longest activity window has the higher priority. If the activity windows are also identical, only one of these schedules will run.
NOTE: When a schedule conflict between full backups occurs,
PowerProtect Data Manager runs the full backup with the longest retention period.
Click
Save to save the changes and return to the
Objectives page.
The
Objectives page updates to display the name and location of the target storage system under
Primary Backup.
After completing the
objective, you can change any details by clicking
Edit next to the
objective.
NOTE:
When a new asset is added to an existing policy, you must run an ad hoc full backup for the newly added asset.
When a new asset is added to a protection policy during a scheduled backup window, the backup starts right away. However, if an asset is added to a protection policy outside of the scheduled backup window, the backup does not start until the next time that backups are configured to run.
If a new asset is added to a protection policy that has a weekly or monthly backup schedule and the current time is within the scheduled
Start and
End times, the backup runs right away, regardless of the date. If the current time is not within the scheduled
Start and
End times, the backup does not start until the next time that backups are configured to run.
For
Self-Service Protection:
Click
Add under
Primary Retention.
The
Add Primary Retention dialog appears.
On the
Target pane of the
Add Primary Retention dialog, specify the following fields:
Storage Name—Select a backup destination from the list of existing DD systems, or select
Add to add a system and complete the details in the
Storage Target dialog.
Storage Unit—Select whether this protection policy should use a
New storage unit on the selected DD system, or select an existing storage unit from the list. Hover over a storage unit to view the full name and statistics for available capacity and total capacity, for example,
testvmpolicy-ppdm-daily-123ab (300 GB/1 TB).
When you select
New, a new storage unit in the format
policy namehostnameunique identifier is created in the storage system upon policy completion, for example,
testvmpolicy-ppdm-daily-123cd.
NOTE: The
Space field indicates the total amount of space, and the percentage of available space, on the storage system.
Network Interface—Select a network interface from the list, if applicable.
Retention Lock—Move the
Retention Lock slider to the right to enable retention locking for these backups.
The retention lock mode setting comes from the configuration of the selected storage unit. When you enable retention locking, the
Retention Lock Mode field displays the corresponding storage unit setting.
Setting a retention lock applies to the current backup copy only, and does not impact the retention lock setting for existing backup copies.
SLA—Select an existing service level agreement that you want to apply to this schedule from the list, or select
Add to create an SLA within the
Add Backup Service Level Agreement wizard.
On the
Retention (Self Service) pane of the
Add Primary Retention dialog, change any required retention times.
CAUTION: If you set a shorter retention period for an incremental or log backup than for the corresponding full backup, then data loss might occur and you might be unable to recover the point-in-time copies.
By default, all backup types have the same retention time. To change the retention times for specific backup types, clear
Set the same retention time for all backup types and change the
Retain
<backup_type> backups for field values as required.
When a different retention time for all backup types is set, you can create additional full backup patterns with different retention times. For example, you can add a full backup pattern
Retain full backups created every week on the Monday and Tuesday for 2 months.
For an Oracle Incremental Merge policy, in the field
Retain incremental pieces for
<number><days_or_weeks>, specify the number of days or weeks that the incremental backup pieces are retained. The default retention period is 7 days. The maximum retention period is 28 days.
Click
Save to save the changes and return to the
Objectives page.
The
Objectives page updates to display the name and location of the target storage system under
Primary Retention.
After completing the
objective, you can change any details by clicking
Edit next to the
objective.
Optionally, replicate the backups:
NOTE:
To enable replication, ensure that you add remote
protection storage as the replication location. The
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides detailed instructions about adding remote
protection storage.
When creating multiple replicas for the same protection policy, it is recommended to select a different storage system for each copy. If you select a storage unit that is the target of another
objective for the same policy, the UI issues a warning. The
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides information about replicating to shared
protection storage to support
PowerProtect Cyber Recovery. Verify the storage targets and the use case before you continue.
When you create a replication objective, you can specify either scheduled replication or replication after backup completion.
NOTE: For replication after backup completion, it is recommended that you update the application agents to the latest version. Depending on the type of backup, the following versions are required to ensure that replication occurs immediately after the backups complete:
For self-service primary backups, update all application agents to
PowerProtect Data Manager version 19.12 or later.
For centralized primary backups, update all application agents to
PowerProtect Data Manager version 19.11 or later.
If you want to replicate only specific backups, perform a manual replication of these backups in advance.
For replicas of centralized backups, when you set retention periods for different backup types, any undefined types use the full backup retention period. For example, if you do not define a log backup in the primary
objective, the log backup for the replication
objective is also undefined. After you run a manual log backup, replicas of that log backup use the same retention period as the full backup.
Click
Replicate next to
Primary Backup or
Primary Retention. An entry for
Replicate is created to the right of the primary backup
objective.
Under
Replicate, click
Add.
The
Add Replication dialog appears, with information in the left pane for each schedule that has been added for the primary backup objective of this protection policy.
NOTE: Backups for all of the listed schedules will be replicated. You cannot select individual schedules for replication.
Select a storage target:
Storage Name—Select a destination from the list of
protection storage. Or, select
Add to add a
protection storage system and complete the details in the
Storage Target window.
Storage Unit—Select an existing storage unit on the
protection storage system. Or, select
New to automatically create a storage unit.
Network Interface—Select a network interface from the list, if applicable.
Retention Lock—Move the
Retention Lock slider to the right to enable retention locking for these replicas.
The retention lock mode setting comes from the configuration of the selected storage unit. When you enable retention locking, the
Retention Lock Mode field displays the corresponding storage unit setting.
SLA—Select an existing replication service level agreement that you want to apply to this schedule from the list. Or, select
Add to create a replication SLA within the
Add Service Level Agreement wizard.
The
PowerProtect Data Manager Administration and User Guide provides more information about replication targets, such as SLAs.
To replicate after the backup finishes, move the
Replicate immediately upon backup completion slider to on.
For scheduled replication, move the
Replicate immediately upon backup completion slider to off, and then complete the schedule details in the
Add Replication dialog.
For replication of the primary backup, the schedule frequency can be every day, week, month, or
x hours.
For daily, weekly, and monthly schedules, the numeric value cannot be modified. For hourly, however, you can edit the numeric value. For example, if you set
Create a Full backup every 4 hours, you can set a value of anywhere from 1 to 12 hours.
By default, all replicas of the primary backup
objective inherit the retention period from the
Retain For value of the synthetic full and full backup schedules.
To specify a different retention period for individual synthetic full and full replicas, clear
Set the same retention time for all replicated copies, click
Edit in the row of each schedule that you want to change, update the value in the
Retain For field, and then click
Save.
CAUTION: Setting a retention period for the replicas of other backup types (such as log backups, incremental, and differential backups, where applicable) that is shorter than the retention period of the corresponding full backup may result in being unable to recover from those replicas.
Click
Save to save your changes and return to the
Objectives page.
Optionally, to move backups from
protection storage to
Cloud Tier, add a Cloud
objective for the primary or replication
objective:
NOTE: To move a backup or replica to
Cloud Tier,
objectives must have a retention time of 14 days or more.
PowerProtect Data Manager also requires the discovery of
protection storage with a configured Cloud unit.
Click
Cloud Tier next to
Primary Backup or
Primary Retention. Or, if adding a Cloud
objective for a replication
objective that you have added, click
Cloud Tier under
Replicate.
An entry for
Cloud Tier is created to the right of the primary
objective, or below the replication
objective.
Under the entry for
Cloud Tier, click
Add.
The
Add Cloud Tier Backup dialog appears, with summary information for the parent
objective to indicate whether you are adding this
Cloud Tierobjective for the primary
objective or the replication
objective.
Complete the
objective details in the
Add Cloud Tier Backup dialog, and then click
Save to save your changes and return to the
Objectives page.
On the
Options page, select the additional options that are required for the policy:
Archive Logs—Select the appropriate option for the deletion of archived logs:
Do not delete—Select this option to prevent the deletion of archived logs during backups. To delete the archived logs, the database administrator must run the delete command manually.
Delete immediately after backup—Select this option to enable the deletion of archived logs immediately after all the backup types that are performed through the protection policy.
Delete older than (days)—Select this option to enable the deletion of the available archived logs that are older than the specified number of days, for all the backup types that are performed through the protection policy. Set the number of days after which the archived logs are deleted.
Recovery Catalog Option—Only for centralized protection in an Oracle Data Guard environment, select the appropriate option for resynchronizing the recovery catalog with a database:
None—By default, the
None value is selected. Select this value when the recovery catalog does not need to be automatically resynchronized with backup copies. This option is applicable to a non-Data Guard environment.
Synchronous sync—Select this option to resynchronize the recovery catalog synchronously with backup copies after each backup.
Asynchronous sync—Select this option to resynchronize the recovery catalog asynchronously with backup copies after each backup.
In the Data Guard environment, it is recommended that you use a recovery catalog to manage the RMAN metadata for all physical databases, including both primary and standby databases. RMAN uses the recovery catalog as the single source of truth for the Data Guard environment.
RMAN only automatically resynchronizes the recovery catalog with a database when connected to this database as
TARGET. RMAN does not automatically resynchronize every database in the Data Guard environment when connected as
TARGET to one database in the environment.
Files Per Set—Specify the maximum number of files that RMAN can include in a backup set. The value must be an integer between 1 and 64, inclusive.
As an alternative to setting the options
Files Per Set,
Maximum Open Files,
Block Size, and
Section Size on the
Options page, you can set the parameters
FILESPERSET,
MAXOPENFILES,
BLOCK_SIZE, and
SECTION_SIZE, respectively, in the configuration file
rman_agent.cfg.
Configuration file requirements for connection to local databases provides details about the configuration file.
For Oracle Incremental Merge backups:
The option
Block Size and parameter
BLOCK_SIZE are not applicable to Oracle Incremental Merge backups.
The option
Files Per Set and parameter
FILESPERSET are only applicable to the archive log backups in Oracle Incremental Merge backups.
The configuration file parameter settings take precedence over the option settings in the
PowerProtect Data Manager UI. These parameter and option settings apply only to centralized backups. For Application Direct backups, the
Files Per Set and
Section Size settings apply only to full, incremental cumulative, and incremental differential backups—not to log backups.
Maximum Open Files—Specify the maximum number of input files that a backup or copy can have open at a given time. The value must be an integer greater than 0.
Block Size—Specify the number of KB of data that the Oracle database reads for the backup operation. The value must be a multiple of the minimum physical block size of the Oracle database. The value must be
<n>K, where
<n> is an integer between 1 and 1024 inclusive. K means kilobytes.
The option
Block Size is not applicable to Oracle Incremental Merge backups.
Section Size—Specify the size in KB, MB, or GB of each backup section in a multisection backup. In the backup set, each backup piece contains the blocks from one file section. The specified value must be
<n>K or
<n>M or
<n>G, where
<n> is an integer greater than 0. K means kilobytes, M means megabytes, and G means gigabytes.
If you specify a section size that is larger than the size of the file, RMAN does not use a multisection backup for the file. If you specify a small section size that would produce more than 256 sections, RMAN increases the section size to a value that results in exactly 256 sections.
Troubleshooting—Select this option to enable the debug logs for troubleshooting purposes.
Click
Next.
The
Summary page appears.
Review the protection policy group configuration details. You can click
Edit next to any completed window's details to change any information. When completed, click
Finish.
An informational message appears to confirm that
PowerProtect Data Manager has saved the protection policy. When the new protection policy group is created,
PowerProtect Data Manager automatically performs a full backup. Subsequent backups are performed according to the specified schedule.
Click
OK to exit the window, or click
Go to Jobs to open the
Jobs window to monitor the backup of the new protection policy group.
You can monitor and view detailed information in the
Jobs window for both centralized and self-service backups and restores of database application agents.
NOTE:
The
Cancel and
Retry options are not available for self-service jobs that are created by database application agents.
When a backup fails, the backup job steps appear as canceled for the particular database. The backup job steps are displayed on the
Step Log tab in the details section of the
Job ID Summary window.
When
PowerProtect Data Manager and the client are updated from an older version and the target DD or storage unit of the Oracle database associated protection policy is changed:
If the objective of the protection policy includes replication, perform a replication from the
Protection Policies page. Select
Protection > Protection Policies > Protect Now and select
Replicate now, and then change the primary target.