Backup and Recovery with Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliances ...

An Oracle White Paper
November 2010
Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS
Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery
Manager

Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
Introduction..........................................................................................2
Oracle Backup and Recovery Solution Overview................................3
Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN).................................................4
Sun ZFS Storage Appliance ............................................................4
Simplicity .............................................................................................5
Speed ..................................................................................................5
Savings................................................................................................6
Reduced Risk ......................................................................................7
Conclusion...........................................................................................8

Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
Introduction
Unceasing data growth is posing a number of challenges for organizations. Not only are
storage costs skyrocketing due to the need to store and manage more data, but protecting the
enterprise's critical data also is becoming increasingly difficult. Databases are widely deployed
and are typically cited as having the most challenging data protection requirements. Some
common challenges include:
• 24X7 operations — Greater amounts of data and the need for enterprise databases to be
available for 24X7 operations makes it increasingly challenging to complete backups within
allotted time windows.
• Burgeoning costs — Storing and backing up more data means greater capital outlays for
storage systems and greater ongoing operations costs for storage administration while IT
budgets remain very tight.
• Increased risk — According to a 2008 report from the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG),
one out of every seven backups and one out of every six recoveries fail 1 .
To meet these challenges, an efficient and effective backup and recovery strategy is of
paramount importance. Oracle Recovery Manager is the preferred backup solution for Oracle
database environments and is engineered to work together with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage
Appliances to meet today's challenging backup requirements. Sun ZFS Storage Appliances
are an ideal fit for Oracle database backups and offer the following advantages:
• Simplicity — The appliances are easy to deploy and manage within an existing environment
and can help simplify backups by providing a centralized infrastructure for multiple backups.
• Speed — With more than twice the recovery throughput of a comparably priced Data
Domain system from EMC, Sun ZFS Storage Appliances offer shorter backup and recovery
windows and sufficient capacity and throughput for consolidating multiple backup workloads.
1 ”Data Protection Market Trends,” Enterprise Strategy Group, January 2008, pp 9.
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
• Savings — Greater throughput for the same price as competitive systems combines with
savings on administration costs to enable more backups at lower TCO.
• Reduced risk — Sun ZFS Storage Appliances are tested, validated and supported together
with Oracle Recovery Manager as a backup and recovery solution.
Oracle Backup and Recovery Solution Overview
The Oracle backup and recovery solution utilizes Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and establishes
the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance as a target for RMAN backups. The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance is
directly attached to the Oracle database server as shown in Figure 1. Because it is only used for backup
and restore functions, the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance can be connected in this way without disrupting
the primary database storage environment.
Figure 1.Oracle backup and recovery solution.
Backups are accomplished using RMAN to copy the database files to the established target on the Sun
ZFS Storage Appliance. The architecture of the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance also supports backups for
multiple different databases. For each database instance running on the server, a separate backup target
is defined on the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. The appliance is designed to handle multiple workloads,
making it a good fit for backing up multiple databases.
The Sun ZFS Storage snapshot feature can also be used to take a snapshot of the RMAN database
backup without impacting the production database. This can be useful for other functions such as
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
establishing a disaster recovery area or cloning the database for development and test environments.
For more information about adding value with database copies, refer to the white paper entitled,
“Adding Value to Oracle Disaster Recovery with Sun ZFS Storage Appliances,” which is available at
http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/storage/unified-storage/.
Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN)
The RMAN backup and recovery utility is the preferred method for efficiently backing up and
recovering the Oracle database. RMAN is tightly integrated with the database server and helps reduce
risk of data loss by providing block-level corruption detection during backup and restore procedures.
Performance and space consumption are also optimized during backup procedures using the RMAN
file multiplexing and compression features. Only database blocks that have changed since the previous
backup are copied, resulting in less need for backup storage space and up to an order of magnitude
reduction in backup times.
Because RMAN is already built into the Oracle database, there are no extra software licenses to buy
and no third-party technology to purchase and manage.
For more information about RMAN, see the technical white paper entitled, “Oracle Database 11g
Backup and Recovery Technologies,” which is available at
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/availability/rman-overview-096633.html.
Sun ZFS Storage Appliance
Sun ZFS Storage Appliances provide all the benefits of unified storage in an easy-to-use appliance
package, enabling organizations to dramatically simplify their storage deployment and management
while also reducing costs. These appliances provide unmatched simplicity and ease-of-use through an
intuitive and powerful browser user interface (BUI). Revolutionary business analytics functionality
allows administrators to quickly diagnose and resolve performance issues across the storage
environment.
The appliances leverage volume servers along with densely packaged high-capacity disk drives and can
also be configured to utilize solid-state drives (SSDs), enabling breakthrough storage performance with
exceptional economics. Leveraging an industry standard server in place of an expensive, proprietary
disk controller reduces both cost and risk because standard components offer economies of scale and
have already been proven in other applications. These components are integrated together in an
appliance framework that greatly simplifies deployment and includes an integrated data services
software stack at no extra cost. The rich set of data services includes compression, data deduplication,
mirroring, snapshot, error correction, and system management features that help simplify ongoing data
management.
The following sections of the paper highlight the business benefits of using a Sun ZFS Storage
Appliance for backup and recovery of the Oracle database. For additional information about Sun ZFS
Storage Appliances, visit http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/.
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
Simplicity
Sun ZFS Storage Appliances offer a simple and straightforward way to implement backup and recovery
with an Oracle database. The appliances can be deployed in less time than traditional backup solutions
and offer simplified administration and management with a BUI management interface and fewer steps
to accomplish many administrative tasks. A recent study by Edison Group showed the following
advantages for Sun ZFS Storage Appliances versus a comparably configured NetApp appliance 2 :
• 34% less time required to provision and configure the storage and its connectivity
• 31% less time for maintenance and typical configuration changes
• 44% less time spent troubleshooting
The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance can be added as a backup device without disrupting the existing
database storage environment. The appliance is used as backup target for RMAN, and as such, does
not affect the primary database storage area. If multiple database instances are running on the server,
each can have its own backup target area on the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. Multiple backup or
restore operations can then be handled simultaneously. With greater than 1PBs of storage space
available on the Sun ZFS Storage 7420, there is plenty of room to handle multiple databases and plenty
of room to grow. Consolidating multiple database backups on a single Sun ZFS Storage Appliance can
also simplify management and reduce complexity.
Lastly, this single-vendor solution for backup and recovery has been tested and validated by Oracle. It
offers operational efficiencies that cannot be achieved when integrating multiple hardware and
software components from different vendors. IT organizations can also save on administration and
training costs because IT staff can focus on learning only Oracle tools versus tools from multiple
vendors.
Speed
With the amount of data to be protected doubling every three to four years, backup and restore
performance has become critical to successfully protecting enterprise data and delivering 24X7
availability for IT services. The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance enables organizations to successfully
complete more backups more quickly, making it easier for administrators to cope with shorter backup
windows. The appliance is designed for high sustained read and write I/O performance and includes
high-throughput protocols such as 10Gb Ethernet, FibreChannel, and InfiniBand.
2 “Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance Comparative Management Costs Study.” Edison Group, August 2010.
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
Tests performed by Oracle engineers have shown that a Sun ZFS Storage 7420 cluster can achieve
sustained transfer rates of 1,700MB/s for backups and up to 1,300MB/s for restore operations 3 . These
backup and restore throughput rates were achieved with a relatively modest configuration and Oracle
estimates that its larger Sun ZFS Storage 7420 configurations could achieve approximately twice these
throughput rates. The tested Sun ZFS Storage 7420 configuration already provides more than double
the documented throughput (790 MB/s and 630MB/s for backup and restore respectively) of a
comparably priced EMC DD880 appliance 4 . Sun ZFS Storage Appliances are thus able to help IT
managers shorten backup and restore times, thereby reducing the business risk of downtime.
Backup speed can also be affected by performance bottlenecks that may not be obvious without close
observation. DTrace Analytics, which is also included in the appliance at no cost, makes it easier to
trace the source of performance bottlenecks and fix them. DTrace Analytics enables administrators to
drill down for in-depth analysis of key storage sub-systems using built-in instrumentation that provides
real-time visibility throughout the data path. Real-time statistical graphs can be used to quickly locate
and isolate problems as well as optimize storage performance and capacity use.
Savings
As storage requirements grow, the cost of backing up data becomes much more substantial. The Sun
ZFS Storage Appliance provides a cost-effective means to meet today’s growing backup and restore
requirements. As mentioned earlier, tests have shown that the Sun ZFS Storage 7420 offers
price/performance that is half that of the competing EMC DD880 appliance. This big
price/performance advantage means that IT managers can reduce their capital outlay for backup and
restore systems while still meeting their objectives for backup and recovery times.
Sun ZFS Storage Appliances also offer several key features that help reduce costs:
• High capacity disk drives in a densely populated configuration enable a low-cost solution with a
small footprint and lower energy costs.
• The intuitive BUI management interface and simplified administrative procedures help reduce
operations costs by reducing administration time.
• Fast provisioning and configuration can help reduce initial setup costs.
3 Tests were performed in Oracle's labs using a ZFS Storage 7420 cluster. Each node was configured with
two 8-core processors (Intel ® Xeon ® Processor X7550, 2.00GHz). The configuration included a total of
184TB (raw) of disk with four disk trays that housed 92 X 2TB SAS-2 hard disk drives and four writeoptimized
SSDs. Larger configurations can yield greater backup and restore throughput.
4 “EMC Backup and Recovery for Oracle 11g OLTP,” pp 18-19. EMC Corporation, February 2010.
Available online at http://www.emc.eu/collateral/hardware/technical-documentation/h6835-backuprecovery-oracle-clariion-data-domain-ra.pdf
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
• Data compression of the RMAN backup is performed in the appliance without impacting the
database server. Compression can improve storage efficiency and thus reduce capital expenditures by
reducing storage capacity requirements.
• No additional software licenses are required for disk-based backup and recovery since the Sun ZFS
Storage Appliance is directly attached to the Oracle database and is used as a backup target for
RMAN 5 .
The fact that all software features and data services are included in the cost of Sun ZFS Storage
Appliances, enables Oracle customers to achieve significant savings compared to competitive systems
that require the purchase of additional software licenses. For example, the Sun ZFS Storage 7320 and
Sun ZFS Storage 7420 offer up to 35% savings over comparable NetApp appliances when including
the appropriate NetApp software licenses 6 .
Reduced Risk
The Oracle backup and recovery solution helps reduce the risk of data loss by providing a proven
backup environment with advanced data protection features. The entire solution has been tested and
validated by Oracle, and all of the hardware and software components are supported together. This
single-vendor approach can result in fewer issues and faster problem resolution, thus reducing business
risk by reducing the frequency and duration of downtime.
The storage efficiencies offered by this solution can also help reduce risk by enabling administrators to
keep multiple full backup copies of the same database. One example of such efficiency is to use the
incremental merge feature in RMAN combined with the snapshot feature in the Sun ZFS Storage
Appliance. Because the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance is directly attached to the database server, the
incremental merge feature in RMAN can be used to merge an incremental backup into an image copy
on disk, thereby creating a more current image copy. Taking a snapshot before the merge allows the
snapshot copy to be utilized for point-in-time recovery operations in the event that an older copy
needs to be restored. Using this approach allows organizations to economically save three or more full
backups on disk and to quickly recover from any of them.
5 If tape backup is added to enable backups from the ZFS Storage Appliance to tape, additional licensing is
required.
6 Oracle list prices for multiple configurations of the Sun ZFS 7320 and Sun ZFS 7420 were compared
against available data for list prices of comparable configurations of the NetApp FAS2050 and FAS3170
appliances respectively. All appropriate software license costs were added to the cost of the NetApp
appliance configurations.
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager
Data protection and data availability are also enhanced by the following features of the Sun ZFS
Storage Appliance:
• End-to-end checksums in the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance help prevent data corruption.
• Multiple RAID implementation options enable organizations to balance their data protection and
performance needs against storage capacity requirements and storage costs.
• Self-healing features of the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance help avoid service interruptions.
• DTrace Analytics helps reduce the risk of downtime by making it easier to find and fix performance
issues.
Conclusion
The combination of Oracle Recovery Manager and the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance results in an ideal
solution for Oracle database backup and recovery. The appliance offers high performance backup and
restore functions, enabling administrators to manage more databases and maintain shorter backup and
restore windows. The intuitive management interface and simplified provisioning can also help
organizations get up and running more quickly while also reducing ongoing operating costs.
As part of Oracle’s integrated hardware and software stack, these easy-to-deploy and easy-to-manage
appliances offer robust backup and restore capabilities at much lower TCO than alternative solutions.
As a result, organizations can address their most challenging backup and recovery issues while staying
within budget.
For more information about Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery Manager, visit
oracle.com or call +1.800.ORACLE1 to speak to an Oracle representative.
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Backup and Recovery with Oracle’s Sun ZFS
Storage Appliances and Oracle Recovery
Manager
November 2010
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