ZDRLA adds smart incremental to be even smarter.

 Recently version 19.1.1.2 of ZDLRA software was released, and one the features is something called "Smart Incremental".  I will walk through how this feature works, and help you understand why features like this are "ZDLRA Only".

I am going to start by walking through how incremental backups become "virtual full backups", and that will give you a better picture of how "smart incremental" is possible.

The most important thing to understand about these features is that the RMAN catalog itself is within the ZDLRA  AND the ZDLRA has the ability to update the RMAN catalog.

How does a normal backup strategy work ? 

That is probably the best place to start.  What DBAs typically do is perform a WFDI (Weekly Full Daily Incremental) backup.  To keep my example simple, I will use the following assumptions.

• My database contains 3 datafile database. SYSTEM, SYSAUX, USERS, but I will only use the example of backing up datafile users.
• Each of these 3 datafiles are 50 GB in size
• I am only performing a differential backup which creates a backup containing the changes since the last backup (full OR incremental).
• My database is in archivelog  *

* NOTE: With ZDLRA you can back up a nologging database, and still take advantage of virtual fulls. The database needs to be in a MOUNTED state when performing the incremental backup.

If placed in a table the backups for datafile USERS would look this. Checkpoint SCN is the current SCN number of the database at the start of the backup.

If I were to look at what is contained in the RMAN catalog (RC_BACKUP_DATAFILE), I would see the same backup information but I would see the SCN information 2 columns.

• Incremental change # is the oldest SCN contained in the backupset. This is the starting SCN number of the previous backup, this backup is based on.
• Checkpoint Change # is  starting SCN number of the backup.  Everything newer than this SCN (including this SCN) needs to be defuzzied.

Normal backup progression (differential)

When performing an incremental RMAN backup of a datafile, the first thing that RMAN does is decide which blocks needs to be backed up. Because you are performing an incremental backup,  you may be backing up all of the blocks, only some of the blocks, or even none of the blocks if the file has not changed.

This is a decision RMAN makes by querying the RMAN catalog entries (or the controlfile entries if you not using an RMAN catalog).

Now let's walk through this decision process.  Each RMAN incremental differential's starting SCN is based on the beginning SCN of the previous backup (except for the full).

By looking at the RMAN catalog (or controlfile), RMAN determines  which blocks need to be contained in each incremental backup.

Normal backup progression (cumulative differential)

Up to release 19.1.1.2, the recommendation was to perform a Cumulative Differential backup. The cumulative differential backup compares the starting SCN number of the last full backup to determine the starting point of the incremental backup (rather than the last incremental backup) .

The advantage of the cumulative over differential, is that a cumulative backups can be applied to the last full and take the place of applying multiple differential backups.  However, cumulative backups are bigger  every day that passes between full backups because they contain all blocks since the last full.

Below is what a cumulative schedule would look like and you can compare this to the differential above.

You can see that each cumulative backups starts with the Checkpoint SCN of the last full to ensure that all blocks changed since the full backup started are captured.

The RMAN catalog entries would look like this.

If you were astute, you would notice a few things happened with the cumulative differential vs the differential.

• The backup size got bigger every day
• The time it took to perform the incremental backup got longer
• The range of SCNs contained in the incremental is larger for a cumulative backup.

ZDLRA backup progression (cumulative differential)

As  you most likely know, one the most important features of the ZDLRA is the ability to create a "virtual full" from an incremental backup.,

If we look at what happens with a cumulative differential (from above), I will fill in the virtual full RMAN catalog entries by shading them light green.

The process of performing backups on the ZDLRA is exactly the same as it is for the above cumulative, but the RMAN catalog looks like this.

What you will noticed by looking at this compared to the normal cumulative process that

• For every cumulative incremental backup there is a matching virtual full backup  The Virtual full backup appears (from the newly inserted catalog entry) to have beeen taken at the same time, and the same starting SCN number as the cumulative incremental. Virtual full backups, and incremental backups match time, and SCN as catalog entries.
• The size of the virtual full is 0 since it is virtual and does not take up any space.
• The completion time for the cumulative incremental backup is the same as the differential backups.  Because the RMAN logic can see the virtual full entry in the catalog, it executes the cumulative incremental EXACTLY as if it is the first differential incremental following a full backup.

Smart Incremental backups -

Now all of this led us to smart incremental backups. Sometimes the cumulative backup process doesn't work quite right.  A few of the reasons this can happen are.

• You perform a full backup to a backup location other than the ZDLRA. This could be because you are backing up to the ZDLRA for the first time replacing a current backup strategy, or maybe you created a special backup to disk to seed a test environment (Using a keep backup for this will alleviate this issue).  The cumulative incremental backup will compare against the last full regardless of where it was taken (there is exceptions if you always use tags to compare).

• You implement TDE or rekey the database.  Implementing TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) changes the blocks, but does not change the SCN numbers of the blocks. A new full backup is required.

Previously, you would have to perform a special full backup to correct these issues. In the example below you can see what happens (without smart incremental) to the RMAN catalog if you perform a backup on Thursday at 12:00 to disk to refresh a development environment.

Since the cumulative backups are based on the last full backup, the Thursday - Saturday backups contain all the blocks that have changed since the disk backup started on Thursday at 12:00.

And, since it is cumulative, each days backup is larger, and takes longer.

This is when you would typically have to force a new level 0 backup of the datafile.

What the smart incremental does

Since the RMAN catalog is controlled by the ZDLRA it can correct the problem for you. You no longer need to perform cumulative backups as the ZDLRA can fill in any issues that occur.

In the case of the Full backup to disk, it can "hide" that entry, and continue to correctly perform differential backups. It would "hide" the disk backup that occured, and inform the RMAN client that the last full backup as of Thursday night is NOT the disk backup, but it is the previous virtual full backup.

\

 In the case of the TDE, it can "hide" all of the Level 0 virtual full backups, and the L1 differential backups (which will force a new level 0).

All of this is done without updating the DB client version. All the magic is done within the RMAN catalog on the ZDLRA.

Now isn't that smart ?

Oracle Database 19c now supports DBMS_CLOUD.

 If you have been wondering why I've spent so much time blogging about how to configure ZFS as an object store, today is the day you get the answer.

Today MOS note 2748362.1 - How To Setup And Use DBMS_CLOUD Package was published.

You are probably saying, "so what?, 21c supports DBMS_CLOUD, and that's a long way off for me"..

This note goes through the steps to configure DBMS_CLOUD for 19c. Yes. it's backported !

NOTE: it is only supported for multitenant

If you were very astute, you might have noticed that the 19.9 release of the software contained scripts in the $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin directory with names like dbms_cloud.sql.

Well today, this published notes explains how to install DBMS_CLOUD packages so that you can use it with your 19.9 + database.

I'm going to take this a step further, and show you how to use these scripts and connect the ZFS appliance.  Keep in mind, there is a ZFS simulator you can use, and do the same steps.

Here is some information on how to do this if you don't know where to start

Configuring ZFS as an object store

Step 1. Install DBMS_CLOUD in the CDB

I am going through the MOS, and I am following the same series of steps.  Creating a script in my /home/oracle/dbc directory, so that I can run this again for all my databases.

Just as in the note, I ran a perl script, and looked at the logs. Everything was successful.

I then ran the 2 queries. First against the CDB, then against the PDB.

So far so good.

Step 2 Create SSL Wallet with Certificates.

The next step is to create a wallet, and download the certificates using the link.  The certificates come in a zip file containing all 3 certificates.

VeriSign.cer
BaltimoreCyberTrust.cer
DigiCert.cer

These are the Certificate Authorities that will be used to authenticate the SSL certificates.  DBMS_CLOUD uses HTTPS, and requires that a valid certificate is used.

ZFS NOTE BEGIN : *************************************

At this point there is an additional step for using ZFS (or your own object store). You need to add the certificate to the wallet if it is a self-signed certificate (which is what ZFS will use normally).

In order to get the certificate you need to display it with the following command (filling in your IP address).

openssl s_client -showcerts -connect 10.136.64.85:443

From the output I want to grab the certificate which is between the BEGIN and END

-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIEWTCCA0GgAwIBAgIIXJAYBgAAAAIwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQELBQAwcDEtMCsGA1UE
AwwkenM3LTJjYXAtMjAwZi12bTAyLnVzLm9zYy5vcmFjbGUuY29tMT8wPQYDVQQN
DDZodHRwczovL3pzNy0yY2FwLTIwMGYtdm0wMi51cy5vc2Mub3JhY2xlLmNvbToy

..

oH4pa4Hv4/s0GKJcjQDTlhyyAQXHD+EDfa0KSqP6+Rcwv9+pzXhTJu6IYJLanKo

uM6RxG2XAIH82blU+A==
-----END CERTIFICATE-----

Once I put it in a file, I perform the same command to load these certificates from my file.

ZFS NOTE END : *****************************************

Once added I display what is in the wallet.

orapki wallet display -wallet .
Oracle PKI Tool Release 21.0.0.0.0 - Production
Version 21.0.0.0.0
Copyright (c) 2004, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Requested Certificates:
User Certificates:
Trusted Certificates:

Subject:        2.5.4.13=https://zs7-2cap-200f-vm02.bgrenn.com:215/\#cert,CN=zs7-2cap-200f-vm02.bgrenn.com
Subject:        2.5.4.13=https://zs7-2cap-200f-vm01.bgrenn.com:215/\#cert,CN=zs7-2cap-200f-vm01.bgrenn.com
Subject:        CN=DigiCert Global Root CA,OU=www.digicert.com,O=DigiCert Inc,C=US
Subject:        CN=Baltimore CyberTrust Root,OU=CyberTrust,O=Baltimore,C=IE
Subject:        CN=VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - G5,OU=(c) 2006 VeriSign\, Inc. - For authorized use only,OU=VeriSign Trust Network,O=VeriSign\, Inc.,C=US

You can see that it captured the server names of the ZFS ports I am using.

Step 3 Configure the Oracle environment for the Wallet.

I followed the next set of instructions to update the sqlnet.ora file with the location of wallet.

A few items to note on this step

• I am in a RAC environment so I need to make the change to ALL nodes in my RAC cluster, and I also need to copy the wallet to the nodes in the same location on all hosts.
• The WALLET_LOCATION is also used by ZDLRA. if you are using a ZDLRA for backups, you need add the certificates to wallet that is used by the ZDLRA.
• If you using Single Sign On which may use the WALLET_LOCATION, be especially careful since they often default to $ORACLE_BASE, but will get over ridden when this is set.

I completed these steps, and I now have the same sqlnet.ora file on all nodes, and my wallet is on all nodes in the same location under $ORACLE_BASE.

Step 4 Configure the Database with ACEs for DBMS_CLOUD.

The next step is to create Access Control Entries (ACEs) to allow communication. This only needs to be in CDB$ROOT.

I stored the script in a file and changed the script in 2 ways

• define sslwalletdir= {my wallet locatioin}  --> I set this.
• I removed all lines around proxy. I didn't need a proxy since I am only using a ZFS internal to my datacenter.

I verified with the query and it returned the location of SSL_WALLET.

Step 5 Verify the configuration of the DBMS_CLOUD

I put the script in a file and made a few changes.

• wallet_path => {my wallet path}
• wallet_password => {my wallet password}
• get_page('https://zs7-2cap-200f-vm02.bgrenn.com') --> I put in the URL for my first ZFS network name (from the certificate) followed by the second name from the certificate.

I got a "valid response" backup.. 

I can also check the ACLs with the script below

SELECT host, lower_port, upper_port, acl
FROM   dba_network_acls;

Step 6 Configure users or roles to use  DBMS_CLOUD

I changed the script to use my username which I created in my PDB to create tables etc. and utilize DBMS_CLOUD, and ran it in my pdb.

I took the second script, removed the proxy information , entered the wallet path and executed in my  PDB.

Step 6 Configure users or roles to use DBMS_CLOUD

I changed the script and added my username in my PDB.

Step 7 Configure ACEs for a user role to use DBMS_CLOUD

Again I removed the proxy information since there was no proxy. I also entered the SSL_wallet directory.

Step 8  Configure the credential for OCI (or S3 if you prefer).

Using the create credential and the parameters I have pointed out in previous posts.

Authentication with a ZFS object store

 I create a credential to point to my OCI bucket on ZFS.

exec DBMS_CLOUD.CREATE_CREDENTIAL ( -
    CREDENTIAL_NAME => 'ZFS', -
    USER_OCID => 'ocid1.user.oc1..oracle', -
    TENANCY_OCID => 'ocid1.tenancy.oc1..nobody', -
    PRIVATE_KEY => 'MIIEogIBAAKCAQEAnLe/u2YjNVac5z1j/Ce7YRSd6wpwaK8elS+TxucaLz32jUaDCUfMbzfSBP0WK00uxbdnRdUAss1F1sRUm+GqyEEvT2c1LRJ0FnfSFEXrJnDZfEVe/dFi90fctbx4BUSqRroh0RQbQyk24710zO2C3tev66eHEvfxxXGUqI+jrDKOJ7sFdGE42R9uRhhWxaWS4e43OEZk41gq2ykdVFlNp...mXU6w6blGpxWkzfPMJKuOhXYoEXM41uxykDX3nq/wPWxKJ7TnShGLyiFMWiuuQF+s29AbwtlAkQRcHnnkvDFHwE=', -
    FINGERPRINT => '1e:6e:0e:79:38:f5:08:ee:7d:87:86:01:13:54:46:c6');

Note the parameters for ZFS

• CREDENTIAL_NAME - Name of the credential
• USER_OCID - 'ocid1.user.oci..' || {ZFS user id}
• TENANCY_ID - 'ocid1.tenancy.oci1..nobody' - hardocded in
• PRIVATE_KEY - Private key matching the public key on the ZFS
• FINGERPRINT - fingerprint for the public key on the ZFS.

Step 9  Load raw data to the object store.

First I am going to open a file, and put some data into it.. Upload the file to my OCI bucket and then create an external table on it.

Below is the input file.

 16TS$                           TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        20ICOL$                         TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
         8C_FILE#_BLOCK#                CLUSTER                  1904172019041720190417VALID
        37I_OBJ2                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        22USER$                         TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        33I_TAB1                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        40I_OBJ5                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        31CDEF$                         TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        41I_IND1                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
         3I_OBJ#                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
         6C_TS#                         CLUSTER                  1904172019041720190417VALID
        51I_CON1                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        34I_UNDO1                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        11I_USER#                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        29C_COBJ#                       CLUSTER                  1904172019041720190417VALID
        49I_COL2                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        32CCOL$                         TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        14SEG$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        23PROXY_DATA$                   TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        44I_FILE2                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        46I_USER1                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        56I_CDEF4                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        21COL$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        47I_USER2                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        26I_PROXY_ROLE_DATA$_1          INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        18OBJ$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        42I_ICOL1                       INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        19IND$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        39I_OBJ4                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        59BOOTSTRAP$                    TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        36I_OBJ1                        INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        15UNDO$                         TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        10C_USER#                       CLUSTER                  1904172019041720190417VALID
         4TAB$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
         2C_OBJ#                        CLUSTER                  1904172019041720190417VALID
        28CON$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
         5CLU$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        27I_PROXY_ROLE_DATA$_2          INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        24I_PROXY_DATA$                 INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        45I_TS1                         INDEX                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        13UET$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        12FET$                          TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID
        17FILE$                         TABLE                    1904172019041720190417VALID

I created a file locally (/tmp/objects.csv), created a bucket (using the OCI CLI tool) and uploaded the file.

Create the bucket on zfs

oci os bucket create --endpoint http://zs7-2cap-200f-vm02.bgrenn.com/oci --namespace-name export/objectstoreoci --compartment-id export/objectstoreoci --name bucketoci  

And copy my file to my bucket.

oci os object put --endpoint http://zs7-2cap-200f-vm02.bgrenn.com/oci ---namespace-name export/objectstoreoci --bucket-name bucketoci  - --file /tmp/objects.csv  --name objects.csv

Step 10  Create an external table on the object.

Now we have the file in the bucket we are ready to create the external table.

ZFS NOTE BEGIN : ***************************************

There is an additional step to access the ZFS. There is a table owned by C##CLOUD$SERVICE which contains the objects store that can be accessed, and how to authenticated. By looking at the current entries you can see the types for OCI and S3.

until I do this you will an error like this..

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-20006: Unsupported object store URI -
https://zs7-2cap-200f-vm01.bgrenn.oracle.com/export/objectstoreoci/bucketoci
/objects.csv
ORA-06512: at "C##CLOUD$SERVICE.DBMS_CLOUD", line 917
ORA-06512: at "C##CLOUD$SERVICE.DBMS_CLOUD", line 2411
ORA-06512: at line 1

Here is the table that we need to change. You can see that it contains 

• CLOUD_TYPE - authentication to use
• BASE_URI_PATTERN - URI pattern to identify and allow
• VERSION - This is used if different authentication versions exist for an object store
• STATUS - Not sure, but they are all '1'

 desc C##CLOUD$SERVICE.dbms_cloud_store;
 Name                       Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------------
 CLOUD_TYPE                        VARCHAR2(128)
 BASE_URI_PATTERN                    VARCHAR2(4000)
 VERSION                        VARCHAR2(128)
 STATUS                         NUMBER

I add a row to this table for my object store.  ORACLE_BMC is the OCI authentication

SQL> insert into C##CLOUD$SERVICE.dbms_cloud_store values ('ORACLE_BMC','%.bgrenn.com',null,1);

1 row created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

ZFS NOTE END : *****************************************

We are ready, now let's create the table and give it a go !!

Create the external table on the object

exec DBMS_CLOUD.CREATE_EXTERNAL_TABLE( -
    table_name      =>'CHANNELS_EXT_ZFS', -
    credential_name =>'ZFS', -
    file_uri_list   =>'https://zs7-2cap-200f-vm01.bgrenn.com/oci/n/export/objectstoreoci/b/bucketoci/o/objects.csv', -
    format          => json_object('trimspaces' value 'rtrim', 'skipheaders' value '1', 'dateformat' value 'YYYYMMDD'), -
    field_list      => 'object_id      (1:10)   char' || -
                      ', object_name    (11:40)  char' || -
                      ', object_type    (41:65)  char' || -
                      ', created_date1  (66:71)  date mask "YYMMDD"' || -
                      ', created_date2  (72:79)  date' || -
                      ', last_ddl_time  (80:87)  date' || -
                      ', status         (88:97)', -
   column_list     => 'object_id      number' || -
                      ', object_name    varchar2(30)' || -
                      ', object_type    varchar2(25)' || -
                      ', status         varchar2(10)' || -
                      ', created_date1  date' || -
                      ', created_date2  date' || -
                      ', last_ddl_time  date');

Select from the table.

OBJECT_ID OBJECT_NAME              OBJECT_TYPE            STATUS
---------- ------------------------------ ------------------------- ----------
CREATED_D CREATED_D LAST_DDL_
--------- --------- ---------
    20 ICOL$              TABLE             VALID
17-APR-19 17-APR-19 17-APR-19

     8 C_FILE#_BLOCK#          CLUSTER            VALID
17-APR-19 17-APR-19 17-APR-19

    37 I_OBJ2              INDEX             VALID
17-APR-19 17-APR-19 17-APR-19

That's all there is to it.

Enjoy !

Oracle Cloud object Store access with rlone.

 If you are using the Oracle Object Store as part of the Oracle Public Cloud, "rclone" is an open source tool you can use to make things easier.

One of the things I really like about RCLONE is that it provides a command line like interface that is easy to use.  If you have looked at the OCI cli tool, it requires a myriad of parameters.  Below is the command I was using with OCI to view my list of buckets (I obfuscated some of the values).

oci os bucket list --endpoint https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com  --namespace-name id20xxxxxofo --compartment-id ocid1.compartment.oc1..aaaaaaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcpqyvzzb4ykd3tyq --config-file ~/.oci/natdconfig 

In order to use the OCI tool, I had to constantly keep a text file open to copy and paste commands.

In comparison, this is the command to list the buckets in my object store using rlcone.

rclone ls oci_bucket:

1) Configure compatibility for an S3 interface in the Public cloud.

In your public cloud council, in the top right hand corner, click on the "silhouette" that controls you settings. in the pull down menu click on "user settings" to bring up the window to configure you resources.  Once there, click on "Customer Secret keys" and then "Generate Secret Key" bring up the window to add a secret key.

On this window give your secret key a name (like S3Key" in my case).  When you click the "Generate Secret key" button, it will give you secret associated with key. SAVE THIS.

Once complete, you will have 2 items associated with your account

NAME:            S3Key                                                        or whatever you named your key.

Access Key:    ddddddddddddeeeeeeeeeffffffffggggg      A uniquely identified key ID

Secret Key :   dd32234sdwercfwe                                     A system generated "secret"

2) Download rclone.

     This can easily be done from the  RCLONE.ORG site.

    Note: You chose the platform you want to execute rclone on, then download the .zip file.

              The .zip file contains the execute, and documentation.

              Copy the "rclone" executable to the location of your choice and make it executable.

2) Configure Rclone.

    You start by executing "rclone config". This will create a configuration file in ~/.config/rclone/rclone called rclone.conf.  This is an interactive interface that will set the correct configuration parameters to be used.

This is an example of what I entered to connect to my Object Store using the S3 interface.

--> rclone config

Give this entry a unique name to identify the S3 object store.

 

Name> oci_s3    <-- my entry name in the config file 

Type of storage to configure.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

Choose a number from below, or type in your own value

..

 4 / Amazon S3 Compliant Storage Provider (AWS, Alibaba, Ceph, Digital Ocean, Dreamhost, IBM COS, Minio, Tencent COS, etc)

..

Storage> 4      <-- 4 identifies this as an S3 compatible object store

Choose your S3 provider.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

Choose a number from below, or type in your own value

..

13 / Any other S3 compatible provider

..

provider> 13      <-- 13 identifies this as "other" S3 compatible object store

Get AWS credentials from runtime (environment variables or EC2/ECS meta data if no env vars).

Only applies if access_key_id and secret_access_key is blank.

Enter a boolean value (true or false). Press Enter for the default ("false").

Choose a number from below, or type in your own value

 1 / Enter AWS credentials in the next step

   \ "false"

 env_auth> 1     <-- 1 to identify that we are using  "AWS compatible Key" for authentication

AWS Access Key ID.

Leave blank for anonymous access or runtime credentials.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

access_key_id>  ddddddddddddeeeeeeeeeffffffffggggg   <-- This is the Access key ID that was generated from my name in the public cloud

AWS Secret Access Key (password)

Leave blank for anonymous access or runtime credentials.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

secret_access_key> dd32234sdwercfwe  --> The system generated key associated with my access key

Region to connect to.

Leave blank if you are using an S3 clone and you don't have a region.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

Choose a number from below, or type in your own value

 1 / Use this if unsure. Will use v4 signatures and an empty region.

   \ ""

region>        --> Leave blank

Endpoint for S3 API.

Required when using an S3 clone.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

Choose a number from below, or type in your own value

endpoint> {namespace}.compat.objectstorage.{region}.oraclecloud.com   --> Note that you will need to fill in your namespace from your account, and ensure the region is correct for the URL.

Location constraint - must be set to match the Region.

Leave blank if not sure. Used when creating buckets only.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

location_constraint>        --> Leave blank

Canned ACL used when creating buckets and storing or copying objects.

This ACL is used for creating objects and if bucket_acl isn't set, for creating buckets too.

For more info visit https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/acl-overview.html#canned-acl

Note that this ACL is applied when server side copying objects as S3

doesn't copy the ACL from the source but rather writes a fresh one.

Enter a string value. Press Enter for the default ("").

Choose a number from below, or type in your own value

 1 / Owner gets FULL_CONTROL. No one else has access rights (default).

   \ "private"

acl>          --> Leave blank

Edit advanced config? (y/n)

y) Yes

n) No (default)

 y/n>           --> Leave blank

Remote config

--------------------

[oci_s3]

type = s3

provider = Other

env_auth = false

access_key_id = S3_Key

secret_access_key = ddddddd...

endpoint = xxxxxxx.compat.objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com

--------------------

y) Yes this is OK (default)

e) Edit this remote

d) Delete this remote

y/e/d> y           --> y to save this entry

3) Validate rclone.

Now let's verify what got create.

> cat ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf

[oci_s3]

type = s3

provider = other

env_auth = false

access_key_id =dd32234sdwercfwe

secret_access_key = dddddxxxxxx

endpoint = xxxxxxx.compat.objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com

acl = authenticated-read

That's It.  In my case 

• the entry is "oci_s3"
• The access key for S3 is dd32234sdwercfwe"
• The secret associated with my S3 key is "dddddxxxxxx"
• The end point I am connecting to is "xxxxxxx.compat.objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com"
• "xxxxxxx" is my namespace
• "us-ashburn-1" is my region

4) Using rclone.

Now with rclone I can execute commands against my object store that are more linux like.

rclone mkdir oci_s3:mybucket  --> will create a bucket named "mybucket"

rclone ls oci_s3:  --> will list all my buckets

rclone ls oci_s3:mybucket --> will list all the objects in my bucket.

I can also use it to copy to and from my bucket.

rlcone copy /home/oracle/myfile.txt oci_s3:mybucket   --> copies the file to the bucket.

Finally, a great command is sync to synchronize the contents of my on-prem to the cloud

 rlcone sync /home/oracle/mydir/ oci_s3:mybucket  --> this will sync the two locations

Now how fun with it !!

Cloud restores to a RAC cluster with RMAN.

 This post is about an RMAN command you probably never thought much about,"Autolocate". I know I never did until I started testing restores from a cloud store.

Now let's see what it is, what it does.

First let's see what the documentation says it does.

"RMAN automatically performs autolocation of all files that it must back up or restore. If you use the noncluster file system local archiving scheme, then a node can only read the archived redo logs that were generated by an instance on that node. RMAN never attempts to back up archived redo logs on a channel it cannot read.

During a restore operation, RMAN automatically performs the autolocation of backups. A channel connected to a specific node only attempts to restore files that were backed up to the node. For example, assume that log sequence 1001 is backed up to the drive attached to node1, while log 1002 is backed up to the drive attached to node2. If you then allocate channels that connect to each node, then the channel connected to node1 can restore log 1001 (but not 1002), and the channel connected to node2 can restore log 1002 (but not 1001)."

After reading this, you are probably wondering why this matters when restoring from a cloud store.

To show you, I will walk through what happens during the "autolocate" process.

First, as you would guess, the "autolocation" occurs before any restore operations can start.

Also, this only comes into play when restoring to multiple nodes in the RAC cluster using channels allocated to the different nodes..

To show why it's important to understand it, I will walk through the test case that I had.

EXAMPLE environment:

MYDB - I have a very large Database, 100 TB composed of 8,000 individual datafiles.

DB Host - I have 8 nodes in my RAC cluster

BACKUP - I backed up to a cloud store with a filesperset 1, section size 32G. since my datafiles where all 32G, they would be individual pieces even with a different filesperset.  My backup is composed of ~8,000 individual backup pieces.

RESTORE - In order to improve my restore performance I configured my restore across all 8 nodes.

What happens:

What the "autolocate" does, by default, is it validates that each backup piece is available from each node.  This is a serial process for each backup, AND for each node.

This turned out ot be a slow process due to the # of validations that needed to be performed. For my example it validated 8,000 X 8 = 64,000 validations.  

Also, I found that this serial process took a lot of time.  Even though each validation takes a fraction of a second, the total time for the validation becomes significant.  In my test case, 8 pieces/second were being validated.

This added up because below is what was happening.

START RESTORE :  00:00

    Node 1 - validate 500 pieces : 01:02

    ......

    Node 1 - validate 5000 pieces : 10:25

    ....

    Node 1 - validate 8000 pieces : 16:40

    Node 2 - start validation : 16:40

    ....

    ....

     Node 8 - validate 8000 pieces    2 : 13:20

BEGIN Restoring files.

So how to get around this issue? If you are sure that all backupieces you are restoring are available from every node in your cluster, you can set it off at the beginning of your restore operation.

RMAN> set autolocate off;

During my testing, it bypassed the validation step, and started restoring the database within a few seconds.

This is something to keep in mind, if you see a gap in time between starting a restore on a RAC cluster, and when it starts assigning datafiles to channels.

ZFS Appliance - Your on-premise cloud store

 This is the first in a series of posts about using ZFS as a cloud store for your S3 bucket, or your OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) bucket in your datacenter.

I am going to walk through in the next few posts how to utilize a ZFS appliance as a cloud store.

There maybe a number of reasons why you might want to do this. Maybe you want to learn more about using cloud buckets for storage, or maybe you are already familiar with the the concept, and you want to jump right in.

As my starting point for this I am going to go through how I configured this in my home office lab so you can too.. That is provided that you have enough hardware sitting around to set it up.

Step 1 : Download an Virtual box. 

If you haven't worked with virtualbox yet, now is a good time to get started.  In order to go through and emulate what I am explaining, you are going to need at least 1 virtualbox environment for the ZFS emulator, and a second environment (virtual or bare metal) for a DB server.  Virtual box will allow you to download an image (which includes the software install) and start it up immediately.  This saves a lot of time and trouble in downloading and configuring an environment (patches, libraries, settings) etc.

Step 2 : Download Database image, and ZFS image

At a bare minimum to go through my demo, you will need 2 environments, The ZFS environment must be a virtual image, but the DB environment is up to you. Below are the 2 Virtual Box images to get you started

VB 1 : Database Virtual Box Appliance / Virtual Machine. DB Version 19.3 (as of writing)

VB 2 : Oracle ZFS Storage Simulator. Version 8.8 (as of writing)

Step 3: Patch ZFS image to latest release.

This can be done by downloading the latest patch from My Oracle support, and applying it to the running ZFS image.  This is critical for the ZFS image, as there have been recent patches to to make these features work seamlessly.

At the end of completing these 3 steps, you will have a ZFS Simulator running on at least release 8.26 (the current release as of writing) , and a database running release 19.3 (mine is running 19.6)

FULL DISCLOSURE : Since I use my DB host for a lot of other testing, I am actually executing my demos on a bare metal environment using OEL (Oracle Enterprise Linux) and  DB version 19.6.

In this first post I am going to go through the steps to configure my ZFS simulator to present itself with both an S3 bucket and an OCI bucket.

From there I will write 2 more posts on setting up security, connecting to the buckets, and backing up my database.

For documentation, these are few of the places I found start with.

• ZFS Appliance 8.8 "Getting started with an S3 object API service"
• ZFS Appliance Object API guild for Amazon S3 service support.
• ZFS Appliance enabling the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure object service

Step 4: Configure the storage pool and share.

To make it easy, I created one big storage pool "mypool" Double Parity. I used 10 disks, and the pool is around 35 GB. Enough to perform some simple tests with. I also created a single share "myshare" using all the default values.

Step 5: Enable S3 and OCI services.

I logged onto the ZFS storage console through my web browser as root, using the IP address I assigned during the first startup, and the password I entered during the first startup of the VB image .

Start by going to the services page for the appliance with "Configuration --> Services"

On this page you will notice that the "HTTP" service (under Data services) is greyed out and disabled.

Click on the "power button" to enable the service.

Once the service starts, it will appear green like other online Data Services.

Now click on the "HTTP" itself bringing up the configuration screen.

First let's enable S3 for the appliance.  

Note: under HTTP, I clicked on the S3 tab bringing up the screen below.   

Click on "Enable S3" and press the "APPLY" button in the top right under "Logs".

Next let's enable OCI for the appliance.

Note: under HTTP, I clicked on the S3 tab bringing up the screen below.   

Click on "Enable OCI" and press the "APPLY" button in the top right under "Logs".

Now that I enabled the S3, and OCI bucket at the appliance I need to enable it for my share. This can be done at different levels, at the Project, or at the Share.  To make things easy (since I only have 1 project and 1 share), I enabled it at the project level.

You can see below that I changed both the "S3 API Mode" and the "OCI API Mode" from "None" to "Read/Write" and applied the changes.

You can also see the URL from the project level

S3    : http://10.0.0.115/s3/v1/export/

OCI : http://10.0.0.115/oci/n/export/

When I look at the share and the protocol setting, I can see the HTTP settings are inherited from the project, and my S3 and OCI bucket URLs are shown on the page.

You can also see the URL from the share level (inherited from the project)

S3    : http://10.0.0.115/s3/v1/export/myshare

OCI : http://10.0.0.115/oci/n/export/myshare

That's all there is to configuring my ZFS appliance to act as a cloud store for both S3 buckets and OCI buckets.

My next 2 posts (I am reserving the spots here to add the links later) will cover.

• Configuring authentication for S3 and OCI in a ZFS object store.
• Accessing the object store through ocicli and Cloudberry

ZDLRA - DISK_RESERVED_SPACE checkup

 I wanted to go through some very basic items to think about on disk reserved space for databases backed up to a ZDLRA.

There are couple of posts that have been written on this by both myself and Sudhakar Kotagiri.

• Sudhakar's post on managing space.
• My post on managing space.

One of the key items to concentrate on is the DISK_RESERVED_SPACE for each database.  A simple explanation of the DISK_RESERVED_SPACE is this setting represents the amount of space you set aside on a database-by-database basis to keep a backup window to support the recovery window goal.

A simple example of the DISK_RESERVED_SPACE is.....

My Full backup takes up 40 TB.  Keeping 14 days of recovery (which is my recovery window goal) takes up an additional 1 TB/day.

In this example, I need 54 TB of storage to keep 14 days of recovery.

For this database, I would set the reserved space to be  56.5 TB to ensure I have an extra 5% of space available to handle any unexpected peaks.

Easy right ?  The value for RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE in the RA_DATABASE view gives you the space needed to support the Recovery Window.

But.. the reason I called this a checkup is that I wanted to make sure some thought is given to the setting. If your database is changing (which it almost always is), then this needs to be reviewed and adjusted.

Below are some simple rules of thumb of what to think about when adjusting DISK_RESERVED_SPACE

• Stable Mature Databases - If your database is mature, and the workload is consistent, the DISK_RESERVED_SPACE should be 5-10% larger than the RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE. This setting should be reviewed at least 4 times year to be sure it is accurate.
• Actively Changing Databases -  If the database has a changing workload. Maybe it is still growing, or maybe new features are being added to the application.  The DISK_RESERVED_SPACE should be set at 5-10% larger than RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE  + Include a percentage for growth. This should be reviewed monthly (at a minimum) OR if a big growth spurt is planned.
• Databases with Peaks -  For some business, there may be databases that have peaks. Maybe they support "Black Friday", or maybe they support huge sales around the superbowl.  The DISK_RESERVED_SPACE should be 5-10% larger than the RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE needed during this peak.  This will ensure that the space is available when the peak comes.
• TDE databases - when a database migrates to TDE, there is a time period where storage is needed for the Pre-TDE backup, and the Post-TDE backup.  You need to adjust the DISK_RESERVED_SPACE to take this into account.  NOTE: Staggering the migration when you migrate to TDE can avoid running out of DISK_RESERVED_SPACE for all databases.
• Databases with ILM - if you have databases performing ILM activities this affects backup space needed.  A simple example would be a database whose historical data is moved to an HCC tablespace when it becomes inactive.  Space needs to be reserved in DISK_RESERVED_SPACE to hold the old structure, the new structure, and the archive logs created during this change.

My suggestion to simplify this is to use PROTECTION POLICIES.  Each type of database can be in it's own protection policy.  Review the DISK_RESERVED_SPACE at the appropriate time for each policy.

It's that easy. :)

ZDLRA - How to do a storage checkup

 One of the items that comes up with the ZDLRA is a storage checkup.  The DBAs want to know more detail about the storage utilization of each database.

Once you understand the above concepts you realize that are there 2 major pieces that affect the storage utilization for a database.

1) How much space a level 0 backup takes.  Since the ZDLRA virtualizes full backups, each database has at least 1 copy of each block on the ZDLRA.  It would be only 1 if it doesn't change, or it could 30 copies of the same block if it changes every day (like system tablespace data). What you are interested is the size of 1 full backup

2) The amount of storage 1 day of changes takes up (on average).  This would be the stored size of an incremental backup (if you perform an incremental every day), and it would be the stored size of the archive logs for a day of workload.

By combining these 2 pieces you can then calculate how much storage is needed for X number of days of backups.

Now how do I do this ? below is the query I use, and I will explain the columns in it.

select db_unique_name,
               trunc(size_estimate,0) estimated_db_size,
               recovery_window_goal,
               trunc(space_usage,0) space_usage,
               trunc(estimate_zero_day_space - ((estimate_seven_day_space - estimate_one_day_space)/6),0) level_0_size,
               trunc((estimate_seven_day_space - estimate_one_day_space)/6,1) one_day_space,
               trunc(recovery_window_space,0) recovery_window_space,
               disk_reserved_space,
estimate_rwg_space
from
(Select db_unique_name,
       Space_usage,
       extract(day from recovery_window_goal) recovery_window_goal,
       dbms_ra.estimate_space (DB_UNIQUE_NAME,numtodsinterval(1,'day')) estimate_zero_day_space,
       dbms_ra.estimate_space (DB_UNIQUE_NAME,numtodsinterval(1,'day')) estimate_one_day_space,
       dbms_ra.estimate_space (DB_UNIQUE_NAME,numtodsinterval(7,'day')) estimate_seven_day_space,
       dbms_ra.estimate_space (DB_UNIQUE_NAME,recovery_window_goal) estimate_rwg_space,
        RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE,
       disk_reserved_space,
       size_estimate
               from ra_database);

 What's returned

DB_UNIQUE_NAME	DB name
RECOVERY_WINDOW_GOAL	How long backups are kept
SPACE_USAGE	How much space (GB) is the DB using in total ?
LEVEL_0_SIZE	Estimated size (GB) of just the full backup
ONE_DAY_SPACE	Estimated space usage (GB) for a single day of backups
RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE	How much space is needed for a 14 day recovery window.
DISK_RESERVED_SPACE	How much space is set aside for backups ?
ESTIMATE_DB_SIZE	How big is the database (GB) estimated to be ?
ESTIMATE_RWG_SPACE	This returns the space (GB) needed for the recovery window from RA_DATABASE which may not match calculating using the columns returned.

Now let's take a look at what I can do with this..

This is an example, where I summarize the space utilization for a couple of  ZDLRAs.

And here I looked at the detail for the databases.

This report (just above this) gives me some really useful information.

• I can see DB02 has a really big change rate. The database is only about 2.5 TB, but it is using 14 TB of storage.
• I can see the disk_reserved_space is way too small for DB01.  DB01 needs about 15 TB to keep it's recovery window goal, but the disk_reserved_space is only 500 GB
• DB03 looks good.  Change rate is not significant, and disk_reserved_space is set a little higher than the RECOVERY_WINDOW_SPACE.

Now finally, I was able to use the one_day_space, and graph out the space utilization for each days Recovery window.

This graph shows each day of RWG and it's storage needs,  the currently USED, and the USABLE space.  I can see that even though my used space is close to the usable space, there is still room for growth. I can also use this to see what happens to my storage utilization if I changed the RWG to 10 days.

I highly recommend periodically doing a health check on your storage utilization, and review the disk_reserved_space.

I hope this gives some information you can use to take a closer look.

**NOTE ** this query is accurate as 9/30/20.  It might need to be adjusted with future releases.

Also, it is only as accurate as the data. The longer a database has been backing up with a consistent workload, the better the estimate.