An Oracle White Paper May 2011

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Introduction ......................................................................................... 2 Modern Requirements for Enterprise Backup and Recovery.............. 3 Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup ........................ 3 Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership ................................................ 5 Reducing Risk to Business Operations............................................... 5 Minimizing Downtime Risks ............................................................ 6 Reducing Deployment and Interoperability Risks ........................... 6 Boosting Backup Performance ........................................................... 7 Conclusion .......................................................................................... 7

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Introduction
Virtually every company, regardless of size or industry, needs data archive capabilities. Datacenter administrators across all industry segments face similar archive challenges: explosive data growth, pressure to meet promised service levels and backup windows for users, forever archive data retention and retrieval requirements, and rising energy costs. Their data protection environments are becoming larger, more complex, and increasingly diverse. Administrators face the challenges of meeting the growing data backup requirements and providing a comprehensive backup solution, while maintaining costs and building a platform that will continue to meet future demands. This paper describes the Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup using Oracle Secure Backup software. The solution includes optimized architectures for deploying Oracle Secure Backup to provide data protection for Oracle engineered systems, including Exadata, SPARC Supercluster, and Oracle Optimized Solutions. These pretested, high performance architectures can be used to accelerate data protection processing and management with breakthrough cost structures using the Oracle Secure Backup software powered by Oracle's servers, Oracles operating systems, and Oracles tape storage. These solutions deliver next-generation data protection for large and small environments with near no single point of failure high availability and the security of encryption. The flexible, multitier architecture provides virtually unlimited scalability with central management and endto-end data protection across heterogeneous technologies.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Modern Requirements for Enterprise Backup and Recovery

Large-scale databases and enterprise applications such as those provisioned on Oracle Exadata or SPARC Superclsuter systems often have very challenging data protection requirements. In addition to the sheer magnitude of data that is stored, these large-scale systems often support 24X7 operations and have stringent Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). With backup and recovery windows shrinking and databases getting larger, performance of backup and recovery solutions is becoming more important. Yet other key requirements cannot be ignored. Todays enterprise backup and recovery systems must balance the opposing objectives of cost, risk, and performance as illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Todays enterprise backup and recovery solutions must address opposing requirements.

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup is a complete offering designed to:

Provide a lower total cost of ownership for back and recovery operations Reduce risk to ongoing IT and business operations Boost backup and recovery performance

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup was designed as a solution for performing network backups of heterogeneous clients, including Oracles engineered systems for Exadata, SPARC Supercluster, and Oracle Optimized Solutions. The Oracle Secure Backup solution provides pretested recommended configurations that offer a complete backup and recovery solution for different RTOs and different backup client types as shown in Figure 2.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

This solution can provide complete end-to-end data protection for network backup clients or it can complement Oracle RMAN and Oracle Data Guard data protection solutions using Oracle ZFS Storage Appliances along with cost effective long-term storage on high-performing encrypted tape.

Figure 2. Providing the complete solution for any recovery time objective.

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup is a unique offering in that it is both low cost and high performance, making it a clear industry leader in terms of price/performance for backup and recovery. It is lower cost than any high performance backup solution because software licensing costs for Oracle Secure Backup software are up to 75% less than most competitors. Secondly, the solution enables the use of tape media, which is the lowest cost storage media, and an ideal media for storing older backup copies. The solution performance scales nearly linearly using a building block approach with pretested server and storage configurations. This architecture also simplifies the solution implementation and makes it easier for future upgrades to accommodate data growth. When the solution is deployed to backup replicated Exadata, SPARC Supercluster, and Oracle Optimized Solutions, it dramatically simplifies backup and recovery processing and management. In these configurations there is no need to deploy complex third party de-duplication technologies to provide complete data protection with copies of local and remote data on encrypted tape in both sites. Achieving a compelling price/performance metric for this solution was a key objective of this Oracle Optimized Solution. Another key objective was determining the performance and sizing characteristics of the proposed architectures. This evaluation included establishing the number of backup targets from Oracle's backup target portfolio that could be supported, along with an understanding of the configuration.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

The sections that follow describe the business benefits that can be achieved with the Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup. For more technical detail and architectural information, see the Oracle technical white paper Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup.

Lowering the Total Cost of Ownership

Oracles engineering investment in the Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup results in lower acquisition, deployment and administration costs for backup and recovery of Oracle solutions when compared to typical multi-vendor, custom-built backup and recovery environments. Factors contributing to realized savings include:

Use of high performance technologies and low cost tape media Inclusion of high value, integrated capabilities with RMAN Reduced effort and special expertise for deployment due to pre-integrated and tested solution Simplified administration through a complete set of tools designed to work together

These factors combine with features of the Oracle Secure Backup to reduce costs as follows:

Lower licensing costs Save up to 75% in licensing costs with Oracle Secure Backup. Oracle Secure Backup licensing is simply based on the number of tape drives. No extra licensing costs for specialized clients such as Exadata or other common features are required to enhance backup and recovery operations and media management. Lower deployment costs The time and effort from project conception to full operation can be reduced by up to 75% with an Oracle Optimized Solution. Oracle engineering has invested considerable effort architecting, testing validating and tuning the solution to greatly reduce the need for trial and error tuning and HA testing on site. In addition, the obvious cost advantage of tape media further reduces the cost per TB of archived data. Simplified administration With a complete set of tools designed to administer the entire environment from Oracle Secure Backup down to the firmware running on individual components, considerable time can be saved over working with a variety of multi-vendor tools. For example, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center can be used to manage the entire environment, including applications, the database, virtual systems, operating system, storage, firmware, administrative rights, backup and recovery, patching and updates.

Reducing Risk to Business Operations

An additional objective of the Oracle Optimized Solutions is to reduce overall risk to business operations. By using solution components that have been proven to work together in Oracle labs, Oracle Optimized Solutions help reduce the risk of downtime or unavailability of data, as well as deployment risks and interoperability risks. Security risks are also reduced by taking advantage of Oracle Key Manager and tape drive encryption. This secures the data with encryption as the data is written to the tape drive.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Minimizing Downtime Risks

There are two important concerns when evaluating the capabilities of a back and recovery system to handle unexpected events or failures of production systems. The first concern is which failures in the backup and recovery system can be handled and recovered from without a service disruption. The impact is relatively clear. If a failure can be handled, then backup and recovery operations can continue. If not, then the backup and recovery system goes offline, and business systems are at risk of data loss. The second concern is what impact the production systems recovery time from failure will have on operations. Can the backup and recovery system restore the production system in time to meet service level agreements? The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup is specifically designed to not only continue operations during a wide variety of potential failures in the backup and recovery system, but also to minimize the impact of those failures. All of the pretested recommended solutions for backup and recovery of Exadata, SPARC Supercluster and Oracle Optimized Solutions in this solution provide a complete highly available solution to help organizations meet their service level agreements.

Reducing Deployment and Interoperability Risks

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup provides everything that is required to deploy a backup and recovery system for Exadata, SPARC Supercluster, and Oracle Optimized Solutions. By providing a complete solution including the servers, high performance networking, encrypted tape storage and management tools, Oracle removes many of the complexities that are common in building out and operating a backup and recovery system. Figure 3 shows the broad variety of technologies and illustrates the complexity involved in building a backup and recovery system using components available from a variety of vendors. Challenges can include integrating and testing technologies, determining compatibility (both initially and with each update), managing the environment, and dealing with a number of different service organizations. In contrast, deploying an Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup implies:

A complete solution optimized and tested to best support backup and recovery for Exadata, SPARC Supercluster, and Oracle Optimized Solutions Hardware and software designed and tested to work together to avoid compatibility issues and to maximize quality of the overall solution A single service and support organization for the entire environment A single set of management tools Oracle Enterprise Manager can be used to manage the entire environment including applications, the database, virtual systems, operating system, storage, firmware, administrative rights, backup and recovery systems, patching and updates and more.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Figure 3. As a single solution provider, Oracle reduces deployment and interoperability risk.

Boosting Backup Performance

Increased database backup system performance can translate directly into gains in efficiency for backup and recovery systems. Oracle Secure Backup features Exclusive Oracle Database backup performance optimizations achieving 2540% faster database backup than other backup and recovery software vendors.

Conclusion
The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup brings together a complete hardware and software backup and recovery solution that has been engineered to deliver optimal performance for enhanced productivity while also reducing cost and risk. Key advantages of the offering and the business benefits offered are summarized in Table 1.
TABLE 1. KEY ADVANTAGES AND BUSINESS BENEFITS OF THE ORACLE OPTIMIZED SOLUTION FOR ORACLE SECURE BACKUP

BUSINESS BENEFIT

ORACLE ADVANTAGE THAT ENABLES THE BUSINESS BENEFIT

Lower TCO

Up to 75% lower licensing costs The pre-tested and pre-tuned solution greatly simplifies deployment and management. The entire environment can be administered with a consistent set of tools that work together.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper

Reduced risk

Hardware and software that is designed and tested to work together helps avoid compatibility issues and unforeseen problems. Highly reliable systems and features reduce the risk of downtime.

Boost Database Backup Performance

Oracle Secure Backup Exclusive Oracle Database integration

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle Secure Backup A Business White Paper May 2011 Author: Dean Halbeisen Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 U.S.A.

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