ODA X8-2 -- Quick Info for Presales + Backup VMs using KVMBR on Virtualized environments

This blog post is about ODA X8-2, the latest generation of Oracle Database Appliance, which is an engineered system family that I have written about lots of times earlier. But! this time it is a little different, as this post is a little defensive :) I m actually writing to defend ODA against the doubts on virtual machine backup & recovery.

Just a little background information, before getting straight to the point;

ODA engineered system family gives us multiple options in terms of  machine size and scalability. We have the HA model for high availability and we have M (Medium) and S(small) models for having fast and reliable single node database (and apps) environments.

The purpose of this blog post is not to give you a detailed information about ODA X8 model family.. 

I will just give a quick, general info about ODA X8 HA and then I 'll get straight to the point.. My actual purpose is to give you some insights that you can use for defending ODA in the presales activities.

In general, if it's the case; I mean if the sizing tells us something like "Exadata is a little too much for the customer environment", we may consider ODA to be placed for the customer's needs. 

For hosting PROD, TEST and DEV environments, we may recommend the ODA X8-2HA. In such a scenario, where we have ODA X8-2 HA for hosting the PROD, ODA X8-2M can be placed as the DR platform.. -- as long as things like computational power and disk capacity of the proposed ODA solution is aligned with the outputs of sizing, and the requirements of the customer.

With its virtualized structure, X8-HA can run both database and application layers in clustered mode (active active or active passive). X8-2M &S can also host both database and applications. (in a non-clustered manner)

Production environments along with the test environments, can be hosted on the ODA machine.. In such an environment, Production environments can be isolated  from the  TEST/DEV/UAT environments (if desired).. 

As for lowering the costs, ODA X8-2M or S can be placed in the DR for hosting standby databases and standby application nodes.

Following is a quick info for giving you the benefits quickly;

ODA X8-2 HA and ODA X8-2 M/S

I am attaching the data sheets of the products. I briefly list the advantages of ODA below;

ODA X8-2 HA Data Sheet

ODA X8-2 S/M Data Sheet

I briefly list the advantages of ODA below;

• Simple, Optimized, Affordable Database System with Built-in Automation (Capabilities and resources for hosting application servers as well.)
• Integrated patching facility. (HW + SW)
• Oracle Database and Application server Licensing with Pay As You Grow and Get Capacity On Demand approach
• Cost-Effective Consolidation Platform for Databases and Applications
• High performance and modern hardware
• Easy installation and setup
• Single point support.. (Oracle supports hardware, OS, DB and Apps tiers)
• On-Premises Database and Application Platform aligned with the cloud (easy pathway for the Cloud) 
• Simplified operations via the easy-to-use Appliance GUI
• Stable, cost-free and  easy-to-manage virtualization (with Oracle Linux KVM)
• Solutions for Database & Guest VM backup recovery

The virtualization solution used with the ODA X8-2 is Oracle Linux KVM. 

KVM is the virtualization used in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as well. 

Oracle invests heavily in Linux and KVM areas. In addition to the Linux Guests, we can also run Windows Guest VMs on ODA/on KVM  -- if we desired to do so..

Of course, ODA shouldn't be thought as a general purpose, an enterprise level consolidation solution. 

It is not a replacement for VMware. But! in some cases, it can replace VMware-like environments.. Especially in smaller project based cases... 

For instance, we can consolidate an Oracle EBS platform as a whole on a virtualized ODA X8-2 HA.. 

EBS TEST, PROD, UAT, DEV database and apps tiers can be hosted on this platform isolated from each other.. 

But! Don't expect all the tools and capabilities that you have on Vmware-like environments to be available on ODA. 

Once again; our real purpose with ODA is not to replace big Vmware-like environments.. 

Our purpose is something different.. It is having a low cost, high tech, reliable and robust engineered system for meeting  the platform requirements of our mid-sized projects or our product based solutions..  Remember the EBS examples that I gave above...

Let's get to the main topic now.. The main reason why I wrote this blog post... It is the backup & recovery on ODA. 

Yes, we have RMAN, RSYNC and ACFS snapshot feature which can be used on ODA environments. 

RMAN (with or without all integrated 3rd party backup tools) can be used for DB backups. 

The filesystem agents of those 3rd party backup tools can also be used for backing up application filesystems and Oracle Homes if needed.

I don't see a need for giving details for RMAN, RSYNC and other agent-based backup solutions, as we all already know those things perfectly well.

Snapshot feature is a little interesting but it is not a big news for us, because it's been around for a long time already. 

Check following blog post, where I demonstrate ACFS snapshot-based database backup & recovery on ODA -> 

https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2017/02/oda-x6-2-using-acfs-snapshots-for.html

ACFS Snapshots can also be used for Virtual Machine (KVM Guest) backup & recovery on ODA.

Being able to use such a feature, I mean the ACFS snapshot feature for Virtual machine or Database backup & recovery is nice to have, but some customers (especially the ones using Hyper-V or Vmware) may want to be able to backup their Virtual Machines using a similar technique that they are used to.. 

I mean, they may want to use a Veeam-like way for backing up their virtual machines, rather than using a snapshot technology. In other words; they may want a real backup for their virtual machines.

This type of a requirement can give us a hard time but! luckily, we have KVMBR tool which can be used on ODA/KVM. (This one is the actual reason that made me write this blog..) 

So, we have an answer for the ones questioning the online VM guest backup capabilities of ODA!

KVMBR the the tool for those purposes.. I mean to to backup/restore KVM domains running from ACFS/LVM or a generic folder repository. 

We can execute our backups without downtime and with limited CPU/IO impact as the file operations are executed with nice/ionice.

KVMBR supports Guest VM repositories on Oracle ACFS, LVM and generic folders.

Please see the following MOS notes for more information on KVMBR and ACFS snapshot method for backing up KVM guest machines on ODA environments.

KVMBR - Tool to backup/restore KVM domains (Doc ID 2688239.1)

Backup of KVM guests on ODA 19.9 BM and later (Doc ID 2779329.1)

That's it for today :) See you in my next post..