Oracle Databases

Deduplication Storage for Backup and Recovery

White Paper: Oracle RMAN Design Best Practices with Data Domain

The Challenge with Protecting Oracle Databases

Enterprises rely on Oracle databases to run their day-to-day business operations. Since Oracle database data is mission-critical, it warrants the highest level of data protection. However, protecting Oracle databases is often complex and expensive because databases tend to be large and can tolerate little downtime for backups.

You can use full or incremental backups to protect Oracle databases. Full backups are faster to perform and restore from. This is because incremental backups often require full scan of the database looking for changed blocks and restoring from incremental backups requires a full backup and subsequent incremental backups.

The tradeoff, however, is the size of full backups, requiring a lot more storage.

The Data Domain Solution

• Data Domain deduplication storage systems
• Data Domain Replicator software option
• Daily full backups using any leading backup software or Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Flashback

The Data Domain solution allows you to achieve:

• Fast, Safe, Cost-Effective, Onsite Recovery: Data Domain deduplication storage systems use a very small amount of physical disk storage, even for repeated full backups of Oracle databases . As a result, daily full backups to the Data Domain systems can use an order-of-magnitude less storage than block-level incremental backups. This method can reduce the storage consumed by a daily full backup by more than 95%.

  Data Domain systems deliver high throughput for high performance backup and recovery operations. Its Data Invulnerability Architecture ensures data integrity and recoverability for Oracle backup data.

• Network-Efficient Replication of Backup Data for Disaster Recovery (DR): Replication technologies like Oracle’s Data Guard focus on almost instantaneous Oracle database resumption. But what about protecting the backup data for DR?

  Because Oracle databases compress so well, very small amounts of new capacity are required on the Data Domain systems day-to-day. Only these new, small, unique, compressed segments need to be sent across an IP WAN or LAN to a second Data Domain system as an offsite repository. Data Domain massively reduces the bandwidth required, by 99%, for site-to-site replication.

• Ease-of-Deployment Leveraging Any Leading Backup Software or Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Flashback: Data Domain deduplication storage systems have been qualified for Oracle backup with the world’s leading backup software applications, including Atempo, CommVault, EMC, IBM, and Symantec. In addition, a Data Domain system is an ideal target for Flashback storage to disk.

Data Domain can provide simple approaches to data protection and disaster recovery that are faster, more resilient and more cost-effective.