Creating a Protected Group for Oracle Databases

Prerequisites

• At least one production site has been created.
• Hosts or host groups and storage devices for host applications have been added to the production site.

Context

The protected objects belonging to one protected group reside on the same storage device. Each protected object occupies independent storage LUNs or volumes.

• If multiple applications are deployed on the primary LUN of the same remote replication pair or consistency group, ensure that all the applications belong to the same protected group. If they belong to different protected groups, some applications may become unavailable during data synchronization, planned migration, or fault recovery of the protected groups.
• When I/O loads of applications are heavy, consistency protection with quiesced databases enabled may fail. Therefore, implement consistency protection for applications during off-peak hours or disable consistency protection.
• After the eReplication Agent is re-installed on the host after being uninstalled, you need to recreate protected groups on the host.

Procedure

1. In the menu bar, Choose Protection.
2. Click Create.
3. Select a protected object.
   1. Set Production Site and Production Host(Group).
   2. In the Available Database area, select a database to be protected.
   3. In the Verification dialog box that is displayed, enter necessary authentication information and click OK.

      Set Authentication Mode, which can be Database Authentication or OS Authentication.

      • Database Authentication: based on an Oracle database user name.

        Enter the sys user name and its password as the authentication information. If you use another user name for authentication, the database cannot be started when you recover or test it.

      • OS Authentication: based on an operating system user name.
        

        For a single-instance database or Oracle RAC cluster deployed on ASM disk groups, you need to enable OS Authentication for the DR database as required by Oracle officially. After data is recovered, select Database Authentication for security purposes.

   4. In the Archive Log Protection list of the Available Database area, set whether to enable protection for archive logs.

      Archive logs record all operations on the databases. They are used to recover data of Oracle databases that are abnormally stopped, maximizing data security.

      

      • If the archive log mode is enabled for the Oracle database and Archive Log Protection is disabled for the database, disable the archive log mode or configure an archive directory for the database at the DR site. Otherwise, the database cannot be started during DR.
      • If the second-level period-based scheduling is used, enabling Archive Log Protection does not take effect.
   5. Optional: If service data is stored in both databases and NAS file systems, click Add NAS File System to add the NAS file systems.

4. Click Next.
5. Set a protection policy.
   1. On the Protection Policy page, the system automatically identifies suitable protection policies. Select a policy based on your data protection solution.
      • When the synchronous replication (SAN) DR technology is used, select Array-Based Replication (Synchronous):Active-Passive DR solution.
      • When the asynchronous replication (SAN), or asynchronous replication (SAN&NAS All-In-One) DR technology is used, select Array-Based Replication (Asynchronous):Active-Passive DR solution.
      

      • If there are suitable protection policies, you can select a protection policy based on your data protection solution and modify the time policy of the protection policy.
      • If there is no suitable protection policy, check whether the storage devices used by protected objects have been configured as planned. If the storage devices have not been configured, configure them as planned. After configuration, perform the following operations: On the menu bar, select Resources. Select a node under the management server. In the site node, click Storage, in the line where the storage device resides, click Refresh to refresh the storage device information under the site. Then, recreate the protected group.
   2. Click Set to set the protection policy for the protected group.
      

      • When multiple protected groups with different time policies are configured, ensure that the time policies do not overlap each other. Otherwise, applications cannot be frozen or unfrozen when these time policies are executed.
      • Archive log space setting cannot work on raw devices; that is, space thresholds cannot be detected.
   • For the Array-Based Replication (Synchronous):Active-Passive DR solution protection policy:
     1. Click Replication Policy tab to set the remote replicate rate between storage arrays. Table 1 lists related parameters.

        

        Table 1 Replication policies

        Replication Policy	Description
        Default configuration	The remote replication rate is the default one set on the storage array.
        Manual configuration	Users can set the remote replication rate for each time segment. Configure the automatic remote replication rate of the storage based on the pre-set replication rate of time period. Select Manual configuration. Click a time color block to modify the replication rate during a time segment.

     2. Click OK.
   • For the Array-Based Replication (Asynchronous):Active-Passive DR solution protection policy:
     1. Click the Scheduling Policy tab. In the Time Policy area, set the time policy for the protected group. Table 2 lists related parameters.

        

        Table 2 Time policies

        Time Policy	Description
        On-demand scheduling	Manually starts protection tasks.
        Period-based scheduling	Automatically starts protection tasks based on a period set by the system. NOTE: To ensure data consistency, the execution timetable for a protected group policy template must be set. You are advised to set the execution time to off-peak hours. Tasks can be executed at multiple time points of a day, a week, or a month. Alternatively, at a specific time segment of a day, a week, or a month with a fixed frequency. It is recommended that the starting time of the validate period is set to a time later than the completion of the initial synchronization. If daylight saving time (DST) is enabled on the eReplication management server, a DR protection task whose trigger time point falls within the DST shift period cannot be executed at the scheduled time. Details are as follows: (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (United States and Canada) is used as an example. The DST starts at 2016-03-12 02:00:00, and ends at 2016-11-06 02:00:00. If the start time of the protection policy falls within the first hour (2016-03-12 02:00:00 to 03:00:00) after the DST starts, for example, 2016-03-12 02:30:00, the protection group will be automatically executed with a delay of one hour, that is 2016-03-12 03:30:00. If the start time of the protection policy falls with the last hour (2016-11-06 01:00:00 to 02:00:00) before the DST ends, for example, 2016-11-06 01:30:00, the protection group will be executed after the DST ends for half an hour.

     2. When the Scheduling Policy is set to Period-based scheduling, in the Expected RPO area, if you select Enable PRO Requirement Satisfaction Check, the actual RPO is check against the configured RPO. If the actual RPO exceeds the expected RPO, the system generates an alarm, indicating that the RPO requirement is not satisfied.

        

        Expected RPO can be set to 0-31 days, 0-23 hours, and 5-59 minutes.

        

        If days and hours are not set, the Expected RPO is 15 minutes by default.

     3. Click Replication Policy tab to set the remote replicate rate between storage arrays. Table 3 lists related parameters.

        

        Table 3 Replication policies

        Replication Policy	Description
        Default configuration	The remote replication rate is the default one set on the storage array.
        Manual configuration	Users can set the remote replication rate for each time segment. Configure the automatic remote replication rate of the storage based on the pre-set replication rate of time period. Select Manual configuration. Click a time color block to modify the replication rate during a time segment.

     4. Click the Consistency Policy tab, select Enable hot backup mode and Configure Min. Archive Space Threshold, and set the threshold.

        To enable the hot backup mode, the archive log mode must be enabled for the database. Otherwise, protected groups cannot be executed after the hot backup mode is enabled. If you do not select Enable hot backup mode, when protected groups are executed based on specified policies, the database remains online but the hot backup mode is not enabled. In this case, data consistency totally relies on storage devices' ability to ensure consistency.

        

        If you select Enable hot backup mode, when protected groups are executed based on specified policies, the database remains online. Before storage array-based replication or taking snapshots, the system will set the database to the hot backup mode to ensure data consistency. After the hot backup mode is enabled, database services may stop because the archive log space is used up during DR execution. Therefore, you are advised to select Configure Min. Archive Space and configure it after enabling the hot backup mode. After the archive log space threshold is specified, DR execution will fail if the archive log space is lower than the specified threshold.

     5. Click OK.

6. Click Next.
7. Set Name and Description of the protected group.
   • Name: contains 4 to 32 characters, including letters, digits, underscores (_), and hyphens (-), but cannot start with a hyphen (-).
   • Description: contains 0 to 255 characters.

8. Optional: If you do not want to manually create a recovery plan for the protected group, select Automatically create a recovery plan after creating protected groups in the lower left corner.
9. Click Finish.
10. Click OK.

Related Operations

• If the protected objects of a protected group or their used storage devices change. On the menu bar, select Resources. And refresh resources or storage devices where the protected objects reside. Then go to the protected group page and refresh protected objects of the protected group by clicking More > Refresh. After the command for refreshing information is sent, you can view details about the command execution in Background Task.
  

  If a recovery plan has been created for a protected group, you can refresh protected objects only when the recovery plan status is Ready, Clear completed, Rollback completed, or Reprotection completed.

• To ensure that information about protected groups is refreshed successfully, you must refresh information about storage devices and hosts at both the production site and DR site.