Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance
Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (Recovery Appliance)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Oracle Zero Data Loss Recovery Appliance (Recovery Appliance) is a computing platform that includes Oracle Corporation (Oracle) hardware and software optimized for Oracle Database backup and recovery. According to Oracle, the Recovery Appliance was designed to ensure recoverability of the most vital Oracle databases, for which the loss of data would be catastrophic.
Oracle's unique advantage of owning the Oracle Database software and the Recovery Appliance enables integrated capabilities for recoverability that cannot be matched by non-Oracle backup and recovery products. After testing a Recovery Appliance, industry analyst firm ESG (via ESG Lab) coined the term “Fiduciary Class Data Recovery” to denote the highest level of trust required by Financial institutions, and that which is fulfilled by Recovery Appliance.
The Recovery Appliance debuted in 2014 as a member of Oracle Corporation's family of "Engineered Systems” and uses the same hardware and software as the popular Oracle Exadata Database Machine, plus additional software specific to the Recovery Appliance for backup, recovery, replication, monitoring and management. The Recovery Appliance is available in a "Base Rack" configuration which can be incrementally increased to a "Full Rack" or larger "multi-rack" configurations. A Base Rack is capable of managing over 100 terabytes of data, a Full Rack over 700 terabytes, and multi-rack configurations over 13 petabytes of data. Since Recovery Appliance only needs to store data that has changed since the last backup, the actual size of databases that are protected can be many times larger than the storage capacity of a Recovery Appliance.
Backup and Recovery of Databases
Backing up databases is an accepted practice of IT professionals. A backup is a separate copy of data that can be restored and used in place of a damaged or unavailable database. Recovery is thus the main goal, and backups are a mechanism to enable recovery. If a backup copy is itself corrupt, it cannot be used for recovery. If the backup data isn’t current, some or all of the changes made to the database since the backup could be lost.
The value of being able to recover data varies greatly, depending on the nature of the database. Financial transactions, medical records, and national security data are examples of databases that require the greatest level of data protection. The average cost of downtime for such databases is estimated at millions of U.S. dollars per hour.
Oracle designed the Recovery Appliance to overcome problems that commonly plague recovery of critical databases:
- Lost transactions
- Corrupt, unrecoverable backups
- Error-prone recovery processes
- Long-running backups
- Application slow-down during backups
Recovery Appliance was designed to continually backup and protect database changes, validate the correctness and recoverability of backups on an ongoing basis, and simplify the process of recovery through automation.
Oracle claims the Recovery Appliance can “virtually eliminate data loss and quickly and easily recover critical data”. After testing a Recovery Appliance, industry analyst firm ESG (via ESG Lab) coined the term “Fiduciary Class Data Recovery” to denote the highest level of trust required by Financial institutions, and that which is fulfilled by Recovery Appliance.
The Evolution of Recovery Appliance
ZDLRA X4 with 4TB drives – Backup Storage: 37TB base rack, 224TB full rack, Full Rack Backup & Restore Rate: 12 TB/hr
ZDLRA X5 with 4TB drives – Backup Storage: 50TB base rack, 340TB full rack, Full Rack Backup & Restore Rate: 12 TB/hr
ZDRLA X5 with 8TB drives – Backup Storage: 94TB base rack, 580TB full rack, Full Rack Backup & Restore Rate: 12 TB/hr
ZDLRA X6 with 8TB drives – Backup Storage: 94TB base rack, 580TB full rack, Full Rack Backup & Restore Rate: 12 TB/hr
ZDLRA X6 with 10TB drives – Backup Storage: 119TB base rack, 729TB full rack, Full Rack Backup & Restore Rate: 12 TB/hr
ZDLRA X7 with 10TB drives – Backup Storage: 119TB base rack, 729TB full rack, Full Rack Backup & Restore Rate: 24 TB/hr
Backup and Recovery of Databases
Backing up databases is an accepted practice of IT professionals. A backup is a separate copy of data that can be restored and used in place of a damaged or unavailable database. Recovery is thus the main goal, and backups are just a mechanism to enable recovery. If a backup copy is itself corrupt, it cannot be used for recovery. If the backup isn’t current, some or all of the changes made to the database since the backup could be lost.
Data protection is complicated and error-prone, with recovery occurring under stress. Recovery Appliance was designed to continually backup and protect database changes, validate the correctness and recoverability of backups on an ongoing basis, and simplify the process of recovery through automation. No complexity, no surprises and most importantly, no lost data. Given the potential for lost business and tarnished reputation, an investment in a Recovery Appliance is, according to users of the product, an insurance policy against disaster. (1)(7)