Back up Oracle with Amazon Simple Storage Service

This blog post reviews how to use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), as storage for an Oracle® Database backup. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the first cloud vendor that Oracle partnered with to enable database backup in the cloud. S3 is the main storage offering of AWS.

Introduction

S3’s simple web-services interface enables applications to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the Internet. S3 is a highly scalable, reliable, fast, and inexpensive data storage infrastructure, and thousands of enterprises rely on it for their production storage needs, from “cold” inexpensive storage to serving rich multimedia in real time to customers worldwide.

The following image illustrates the S3 concept:

Back up Oracle with Amazon Simple Storage Service

Oracle Secure Backup cloud module

The Oracle Secure Backup (OSB) cloud module enables an Oracle Database to send its backup to Amazon S3. It is compatible with Oracle Database versions 9i Release 2 and above, requires a network connection to the internet, and provides the means of payment to AWS. The OSB cloud module can also be used while the database is running within the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). This way it benefits from the higher internal network bandwidth without any transfer costs in to or out of S3.

The OSB cloud module is implemented by using the Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) serial backup tape (SBT) interface. The SBT interface allows external backup libraries to be seamlessly integrated with RMAN. Consequently, database administrators can continue to use their existing backup tools, such as Enterprise Manager, RMAN and other scripts, and so on, to perform cloud backups.

The OSB cloud module is available for Linux® 64 & SPARC® 64. The versions for Microsoft® Windows 32-bit and Linux 32-bit are deprecated.

The following sections walk you through installing the OSB cloud module and configuring a sample cloud backup.

The first step in getting started with the OSB cloud module is to sign up for Amazon S3. You can do this by visiting the Amazon S3 website, as shown in the following image:

After registration, users get a pair of access identifiers called the Access key ID and the Secret Access key, as shown in the following image:

To find your access key ID and secret access key:

Log in to your AWS Management Console.
Click on your user name at the top right of the page.
Click Security Credentials in the drop-down menu.
Your keys are listed in the Access keys section.
If you do not have a key, click Create access key.

Register for an account

Register for an Oracle.com or Oracle Technology Network (OTN) account. You must have one of these accounts to install the OSB cloud module. New accounts can be created by visiting the OTN website.

Install the OSB cloud module

Download the OSB cloud module install tool from the OTN website and run the following code to install the module.

[root@ip-10-0-1-135 Downloads]# unzip osbws_installer.zip
  Archive:  osbws_installer.zip
  inflating: osbws_install.jar
  inflating: osbws_readme.txt
[root@ip-10-0-1-135 Downloads]#
[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 dbs]$ /home/oracle/jdk1.8.0_144/bin/java -jar osbws_install.jar \
> -AWSID ******************** \
> -AWSKey ******************************** \
> -otnUser [email protected] \
> -walletDir $ORACLE_HOME/dbs/osbws_wallet \
> -libDir $ORACLE_HOME/lib

Oracle Secure Backup Web Service Install Tool, build 2017-06-01
AWS credentials are valid.
Oracle Secure Backup Web Service wallet created in directory /u01/app/PROD/db/tech_st/11.1.0/dbs/osbws_wallet.
Oracle Secure Backup Web Service initialization file /u01/app/PROD/db/tech_st/11.1.0/dbs/osbwsPROD.ora created.
Downloading Oracle Secure Backup Web Service Software Library from file osbws_linux64.zip.
Download complete.

Verify the files

Verify the library file, libosbws.so, by running the following code:

[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 osbws_wallet]$ cd $ORACLE_HOME
[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 11.1.0]$ cd lib
[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 lib]$ ls -ltr libosbws.so
  -rw-r--r--. 1 oracle dba  93601830 Aug  5 07:00 libosbws.so

Verify the OSB parameter file by running the following code:

[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 lib]$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/dbs
[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 dbs]$ ls -ltr osbwsPROD.ora
  -rw-r--r--. 1 oracle dba     145 Aug  5 07:00 osbwsPROD.ora
[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 dbs]$ cat osbwsPROD.ora
  OSB_WS_HOST=https://s3.amazonaws.com
  OSB_WS_WALLET='location=file:/u01/app/PROD/db/tech_st/11.1.0/dbs/osbws_wallet CREDENTIAL_ALIAS=vickey07_aws'
[oracle@ip-10-0-1-135 dbs]$ ls -ltr osbws_wallet
  total 4
  -rw-------. 1 oracle dba    0 Aug  5 07:00 cwallet.sso.lck
  -rw-------. 1 oracle dba 1613 Aug  5 07:00 cwallet.sso

Back up the USERS tablespace

Run RMAN Backup to back up the USERS tablespace to S3 by executing the following code:

RMAN> run {
  allocate channel s3_bucket device type sbt
  parms 'SBT_LIBRARY=/u01/app/PROD/db/tech_st/11.1.0/lib/libosbws.so ENV=(OSB_WS_PFILE=/u01/app/PROD/db/tech_st/11.1.0/dbs/osbwsPROD.ora)';
  backup tablespace users;
}
2> 3> 4> 5>

  allocated channel: s3_bucket
  channel s3_bucket: SID=400 device type=SBT_TAPE
  channel s3_bucket: Oracle Secure Backup Web Services Library VER=3.17.7.27

  Starting backup at 05-AUG-17
  channel s3_bucket: starting full datafile backup set
  channel s3_bucket: specifying datafile(s) in backup set
  input datafile file number=00019 name=/u01/app/PROD/db/apps_st/data/user01.dbf
  channel s3_bucket: starting piece 1 at 05-AUG-17
  channel s3_bucket: finished piece 1 at 05-AUG-17
  piece handle=03sb4ecv_1_1 tag=TAG20170805T072414 comment=API Version 2.0,MMS Version 3.17.7.27
  channel s3_bucket: backup set complete, elapsed time: 00:00:01
  Finished backup at 05-AUG-17
  released channel: s3_bucket
RMAN>

Verify the RMAN backup

Verify the RMAN backup of the USERS tablespace to S3 by running the following code:

RMAN> list backup of tablespace users;


  List of Backup Sets
  ===================


  BS Key  Type LV Size       Device Type Elapsed Time Completion Time
  ------- ---- -- ---------- ----------- ------------ ---------------
  1       Full    1.03M      DISK        00:00:00     05-AUG-17
    BP Key: 1   Status: AVAILABLE  Compressed: NO  Tag: TAG20170805T071737
    Piece Name: /u01/app/PROD/db/tech_st/11.1.0/dbs/02sb4e0i_1_1

  List of Datafiles in backup set 1
  File LV Type Ckp SCN    Ckp Time  Name
  ---- -- ---- ---------- --------- ----
  19      Full 5965126970157 05-AUG-17 /u01/app/PROD/db/apps_st/data/user01.dbf

  BS Key  Type LV Size       Device Type Elapsed Time Completion Time
  ------- ---- -- ---------- ----------- ------------ ---------------
  2       Full    1.25M      SBT_TAPE    00:00:00     05-AUG-17
    BP Key: 2   Status: AVAILABLE  Compressed: NO  Tag: TAG20170805T072414
    Handle: 03sb4ecv_1_1   Media: s3.amazonaws.com/oracle-data-vickey07-1

  List of Datafiles in backup set 2
  File LV Type Ckp SCN    Ckp Time  Name
  ---- -- ---- ---------- --------- ----
  19      Full 5965126970339 05-AUG-17 /u01/app/PROD/db/apps_st/data/user01.dbf
RMAN>

Notice that the first backup was a local one run earlier and shows a local backup piece (file). The second backup shows that the media was s3.amazonaws.com. The oracle-data-vickey07-1 is the bucket, or logical container, automatically created within Amazon S3.

You can also verify the results of the backup from the AWS console as shown in the following image:

Conclusion

The Oracle OSB cloud module allows customers to use Amazon S3 as their offsite backup storage destination. Compared to traditional tape-based offsite storage, cloud backups are more accessible, faster to restore under most circumstances, and more reliable. They also eliminate the overhead associated with maintaining offsite backup operations. Cloud backups ensure optimal protection for databases running within the compute cloud.

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