“We don’t have backups because nothing has ever happened to us” — said a client before his disk failed. Since then, a backup strategy has been a mandatory part of every deployment.
The 3-2-1 rule¶
Three copies of data, two different media, one offsite. Primary data on SAN, daily backup to NAS, weekly copy in another datacenter.
Oracle RMAN¶
Hot backup without stopping the database. Incremental backup. Block change tracking. Retention: 30 days of point-in-time recovery. Daily incremental level 1, weekly full.
Application servers¶
Configuration: daily tar+gzip to NAS. Artifacts: in Nexus. Server configuration: in Git — full rebuild from scratch in a matter of hours.
Recovery testing¶
Quarterly: restore Oracle from backup to a test server, verify consistency, start the application. Documented and timed — restoring 500 GB: 2 hours.
Monitoring¶
Zabbix: RMAN job success, age of last backup, NAS availability, free space.
Conclusion¶
The 3-2-1 rule, RMAN, configuration in Git, regular recovery testing. A backup without testing is just hope.
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