Oracle's Backup Cloud Service (OCI) - 3 setup your backup

In this series of posts:

Oracle's Backup Cloud Service (OCI)-1 - The Oracle OCI Backup Cloud

Oracle's Backup Cloud Service (OCI) - 2 - setup OCI and your server environment

Oracle's Backup Cloud Service (OCI) - 3 - You are here

At this point, you've read about why you want to use OCI and the benefits and you've read how to setup your environment for it.  This one is about setting up your backups to use it.  The only negative I can say after using OCP/OCI for over a year is that they change the security certificates without warning.  If you install/setup the software per the docs and you have a lot of databases...this can easily occupy many hours that day, reinstalling all the OCI software for every Oracle_Home in your infrastructure.  This is why in my previous post, I recommended you use a shared mount.

You have already:
1. Installed OCI software on a shared mount
2. Setup a container in the cloud web page
3. Used the jar file to create the environment files you need
4. Enabled block change tracking in the database (for incrementals)
5. Enabled medium compression in rman (per the OCI backup docs, this is normally licensed as part of the compression pack, but it appears if you're paying for OCI backups, this is included.  Talk to your Oracle sales guy.)

In the server you used in the last post, as the db software owner:
1. cd /nas/dba/backups/cfg

     2. ls

        ...you should see a file called opc[database name].ora

     3. You can use this as a template for all your other databases...just copy the file to have the new database name and update the container parameter in the file.  

      4. If you use stored scripts in an rman repository, you can add the backup scripts similar to this.  This is just the archivelog backup...you'll want incrementals and fulls, obviously, but the key is the allocate channel commands, which are the same.  Add more channels to increase performance...until your network guys complain:

printing stored global script: tstoracle01_TSTDB1_arch

{

allocate channel ch1 DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' CONNECT 'sys/[the_pw]@TSTDB1' PARMS  'SBT_LIBRARY=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/libopc.so, SBT_PARMS=(OPC_PFILE=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/opcTSTDB_a.ora)';

allocate channel ch2 DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' CONNECT 'sys/[the_pw]@TSTDB2' PARMS  'SBT_LIBRARY=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/libopc.so, SBT_PARMS=(OPC_PFILE=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/opcTSTDB_a.ora)';

allocate channel ch3 DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' CONNECT 'sys/[the_pw]@TSTDB3' PARMS  'SBT_LIBRARY=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/libopc.so, SBT_PARMS=(OPC_PFILE=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/opcTSTDB_a.ora)';

crosscheck archivelog all;

delete expired archivelog all;

backup as compressed backupset archivelog filesperset 8 not backed up 1 times delete input;

}

   5. Make sure your rman environment is set up correctly:

CONFIGURE COMPRESSION ALGORITHM 'MEDIUM';

CONFIGURE DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE TO SBT_TAPE;

CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE 'SBT_TAPE' PARMS 'SBT_LIBRARY=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/libopc.so, SBT_PARMS=(OPC_PFILE=/nas/dba/backups/cfg/opcTSTDB_a.ora)';

    6. Assuming you can tnsping to each node from node 1, and you kick off the script from node 1, when you kick off the backup, it should work from all 3 nodes.  You'll also need a maint script to delete backups that are outside of your retention period...otherwise your OCI storage will grow too large.  Here's an example of a maint script:
printing stored global script: global_maint_backup
{
crosscheck backupset device type sbt_tape;
crosscheck archivelog all;
delete noprompt expired archivelog all;
delete noprompt expired backup;
delete noprompt obsolete;
}

  

    7. One of the requirements for OCI is that the backups MUST be encrypted.  This is easy...before your backup script, after you get in to rman, just add:

    

       set encryption on identified by '1VeryGoodPassword!' ONLY;

     ...and when you do the restore, you have to add a line to decrypt:

       set decryption identified by '1VeryGoodPassword!';

    8. When you do the restore, you'll probably want to use many more channels then you do when you're backing up...assuming its an emergency and you need the restore done asap.  When you add lots of channels, depending on your network equipment, it may help you compete for bandwidth favorably from the cat videos being watched by all the marketing managers at your company.