Oracle Disaster Recovery

Oracle Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds – DR Use Cases

This blog is the second blog in the series of providing Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery to Oracle workloads on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds.

The first blog “Oracle Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds” was released in 2021 and was the comprehensive reference architecture solution which described the configuration and implementation of various business continuity and disaster recovery options e.g. Native Oracle tools, VMware tools (SRM, vSphere Replication, Array based using VMFS/vVOLS, VSR , VCDR) across all 3 levels – Application, VMware platform, and Storage levels of both Oracle Single instance and Real Application Cluster (RAC) workloads on the VMware vSphere hybrid multi-cloud platform. This includes on-premises and VMware clouds, with an emphasis on VMware Cloud on AWS.

 

 

 

 

Key points to take away from this blog

 

This blog focusses primarily on use-case scenarios for providing Disaster Recovery for Oracle Single instance & Oracle RAC workloads, after being migrated / replatformed to VMware on-premises, with an aim of ultimately providing DR to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud from the below source platforms

  • Big-endian systems (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX)
  • Oracle Engineered Systems (e.g., Exadata, ODA etc)
  • Physical commodity x86-64 servers
  • non-VMware platform (OVM, LVM, KVM, Xen)

 

The process of migrating Oracle Workloads to VMware on-premises with ultimately providing DR to VMware Hybrid Multi-clouds can be broken down broadly into 2 steps

  • Migrating / Replatforming from above source platforms to VMware on-premises using Oracle / VMware tools
  • Providing DR for Oracle workloads on VMware on-premises to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds using Oracle / VMware tools

 

Current Restriction of Multi-writer attribute & Snapshots with Multi-writer with Oracle RAC for providing DR to VMware Multi-Clouds can be remediated for VMware vSphere Replication (VSR) & VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) using the below workarounds –

  • vSphere Replication (VSR) – vSphere Replication cannot replicate virtual machines that share vmdk files
    • Workaround – Use DataGuard to replicate from RAC to a Local DG VM on VMware on-premises and then protect the Local DG VM using vSphere Replication (VSR) to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds
  • VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) – VCDR uses scheduled snapshots to replicate to SCFS and snapshots currently has restrictions with multi-writer vmdk’s (KB 1034165 & KB 2121181).
    • Workaround – Use DataGuard to replicate from RAC to a Local DG VM on VMware on-premises and then protect the Local DG VM using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds

 

  

 

 

 

Oracle Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds

 

The “Oracle Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds” reference architecture solution validates the business continuity and disaster recovery functionality of Oracle Single-Instance and Oracle RAC deployments using AFA Storage (VMFS & vVOL) at all three below levels at on-premises and/or VMware clouds:

  • Application level
  • vSphere level
  • Storage level

 

The choice of the business continuity or disaster recovery solution to adopt depends on application needs, SLAs, RTO, RPO and various other factors.

The Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery methods can be summarized in the illustration below:

 

 

 

 

 

Migration of Oracle Workloads to VMware on-premises with providing DR to VMware Hybrid Multi-clouds

 

The process of migrating Oracle Workloads to VMware on-premises with ultimately providing DR to VMware Hybrid Multi-clouds can be broken down into 2 steps

  • Migrating / Replatforming from below source platforms to VMware on-premises using Oracle / VMware tools
    • Big-endian systems (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX)
    • Oracle Engineered Systems (e.g., Exadata, ODA etc)
    • Physical commodity x86-64 servers
    • non-VMware platform (OVM, LVM, KVM, Xen)
  • Providing DR for Oracle workloads from VMware on-premises to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds using Oracle / VMware tools

One could choose to DR from above source platforms directly to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds using Oracle replication tools. This use case is very little prevalence among the Oracle community because Customers want to capitalize on the value proposition, feature-rich capabilities, newer innovations with lower TCO that VMware as a platform has to offer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 1 – Migrating / Replatforming from various source platforms to VMware on-premises platform

 

Understanding the performance characteristics and growth patterns of the workloads on the current platform, as well as the resource characteristics and constraints of the target platform will help as part of the replatforming effort when one embarks on the journey to migrate Oracle workloads from the above source platforms to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds.

An important aspect of the migration process is the endianness of the source and target platform, primarily expressed as big-endian (BE) or little-endian (LE).

A big-endian system stores the most significant byte of a word at the smallest memory address and the least significant byte at the largest. A little-endian system, in contrast, stores the least-significant byte at the smallest address.  Learn more about endianness.

 

For Oracle workloads, changing platforms requires the data be moved using one of the following methods

  • Export or import to include the use of Datapump facilities. All versions support export and import, however Datapump 10.1.0.2 or higher is required
  • Transportable tablespaces 10G or later
  • RMAN convert database functions. 10G or Later
  • RMAN duplicate
  • Streams replication
  • Create table as select (CTAS)
  • Oracle Dataguard heterogeneous primary and physical standbys if different endianness
  • Oracle Dataguard Physical, Logical & Active Dataguard for same endianness
  • Oracle GoldenGate

The choices available will depend on BOTH the Operating System and Oracle versions on both the source and destination.

Learn more about Oracle data migration across platforms at My Oracle Support Doc ID Migration of An Oracle Database Across OS Platforms (Generic Platform) (Doc ID 733205.1).

 

In addition to the above Oracle tools, VMware provides tools that can help migrate workloads on a physical x86 platform to a VMware platform

 

As part of the replatforming exercise, recommendation is to follow the Oracle Best Practices guidelines along with referring to the relevant technical collateral given below

 

As part of the replatforming exercise, there are different ways an Oracle database can be migrated to VMware on-premises as shown below

  • Single Instance database
    • To Single Instance
    • To RAC
      • Migrate as Single Instance and Convert to a RAC database..
    • RAC database
      • To RAC
      • To Single Instance database

 

The Single Instance to RAC and vice-versa is beyond the scope of this blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2 – Providing DR for Oracle workloads from VMware on-premises to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds using Oracle / VMware tools

 

At this stage, once the customer has successfully replatformed their Single Instance / RAC workloads on VMware on-premises, the next order of business is to providing DR for these Single Instance / RAC workloads to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds

Oracle / VMware / 3rd Party tools can be used to replicate the Single instance / RAC database to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud.

The tools, their pros and cons are shown as in the table below

 

 

 

 

 

Use Case 1 – Oracle Disaster Recovery for Single Instance workloads to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds

This use case focuses on providing DR for Single Instance workloads on VMware on-premises to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud.

Below tools can be used to provide DR for Single Instance workloads on VMware on-premises without any restrictions to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud which includes

  • Oracle tools – Data Guard, Golden Gate
  • VMware tools – VMware vSphere Replication (VSR), VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR)
  • 3rd Party tools – out of scope for this blog

 

 

 

 

Use Case 2 – Oracle Disaster Recovery for RAC workloads to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds

This use case focuses on providing DR for RAC workloads on VMware on-premises to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud.

Below tools can be used to provide DR for RAC Instance workloads on VMware on-premises with some current restrictions to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud which includes

  • Oracle tools – Data Guard, Golden Gate
  • VMware tools – VMware vSphere Replication (VSR), VCDR
    • vSphere Replication (VSR) – vSphere Replication cannot replicate virtual machines that share vmdk files
      • Workaround – Use DataGuard to replicate from RAC to a Local DG VM on VMware on-premises and then protect the Local DG VM using vSphere Replication (VSR) to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds
    • VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) – VCDR uses scheduled snapshots to replicate to SCFS and snapshots currently has restrictions with multi-writer vmdk’s (KB 1034165 & KB 2121181).
      • Workaround – Use DataGuard to replicate from RAC to a Local DG VM on VMware on-premises and then protect the Local DG VM using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds
    • 3rd Party tools – out of scope for this blog

 

The 2 use cases are further explained using the illustration below.

 

 

 

 

 

Summary

 

This blog focusses primarily on use-case scenarios for providing Disaster Recovery for Oracle Single instance & Oracle RAC workloads, after being migrated / replatformed to VMware on-premises, with an aim of ultimately providing DR to VMware Hybrid Multi-Cloud from the below source platforms

  • Big-endian systems (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX)
  • Oracle Engineered Systems (e.g., Exadata, ODA etc)
  • Physical commodity x86-64 servers
  • non-VMware platform (OVM, LVM, KVM, Xen)

 

The process of migrating Oracle Workloads to VMware on-premises with ultimately providing DR to VMware Hybrid Multi-clouds can be broken down broadly into 2 steps

  • Migrating / Replatforming from above source platforms to VMware on-premises using Oracle / VMware tools
  • Providing DR for Oracle workloads on VMware on-premises to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds using Oracle / VMware tools

 

Current Restriction of Multi-writer attribute & Snapshots with Multi-writer with Oracle RAC for providing DR to VMware Multi-Clouds can be remediated for VMware vSphere Replication (VSR) & VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) using the below workarounds –

  • vSphere Replication (VSR) – vSphere Replication cannot replicate virtual machines that share vmdk files
    • Workaround – Use DataGuard to replicate from RAC to a Local DG VM on VMware on-premises and then protect the Local DG VM using vSphere Replication (VSR) to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds
  • VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) – VCDR uses scheduled snapshots to replicate to SCFS and snapshots currently has restrictions with multi-writer vmdk’s (KB 1034165 & KB 2121181).
    • Workaround – Use DataGuard to replicate from RAC to a Local DG VM on VMware on-premises and then protect the Local DG VM using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR) to VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds

 

 

 

Audience

 

This reference architecture is intended for Oracle database administrators (DBAs) as well as virtualization and storage architects involved in planning, architecting, and administering business continuity and disaster recovery processes for business-critical Oracle environments on the VMware SDDC platform.

The paper can be found at Oracle Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE

 

 

 

Conclusion

All Oracle on VMware vSphere collaterals can be found in the url below

Oracle on VMware Collateral – One Stop Shop
https://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2017/01/oracle-vmware-collateral-one-stop-shop.html

 

 

Sudhir Balasubramanian

Sudhir Balasubramanian is a Senior Staff Solution Architect and Global Oracle Field Practice Lead specializing in Oracle on VMware Hybrid Multi-Clouds. In addition , Sudhir also focuses on educating VMware…

Related Articles