Mar
7
Written by:
John Pocknell
Monday, March 07, 2011
STRUGGLING TO MANAGE ALL YOUR ORACLE RMAN BACKUPS? THE SOLUTION IS RIGHT HERE!
Get ready for an exciting new product to manage and analyze your Oracle RMAN backups
For all you Oracle DBAs out there, have you often wished there was a better way to manage your Oracle RMAN backups? Have you often asked yourself - is there some way to have a single, consolidated report of which backups executed successfully, which failed, what type they were, how much space they consumed, whether there were policy violations, some sort of health check?
Well, now there is! I am pleased to announce the Preview Edition of a brand new product called Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle.
Supporting an essential part of everyday DBA activities, Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle is a standalone product which can be used independently or in addition to Toad for Oracle in order to provide tremendous value for Oracle DBAs.
Quest Software already provides Toad DBA Suite for Oracle which provides an extremely well rounded solution for Oracle DBAs and helps them simplify and automate administration tasks, perform effective performance management and help to mitigate the risks associated with change management. And don’t forget that we recently (Toad 10.1) added additional capabilities (at no extra charge) including Spotlight on Unix/Linux, Spotlight on Windows and Predictive Diagnostics which represents exceptional value-for-money.
We believe that Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle will provide the perfect complement to that solution.
Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle simplifies and speeds up the task of reporting on the status of Oracle RMAN backups across all the DBAs managed databases as well as providing reports, health check advisories and policy violations as part of an existing lightweight, nimble desktop solution and offers the following key features and benefits:Multi-database reporting – dashboard reporting across multiple databases or deep-dive into one database.
- Oracle RMAN policy definition and policy violation reporting – checks to ensure the DBA’s backup strategy is actually working.
- Oracle RMAN health check – embodies advice from the leading RMAN experts.
- Backup performance tracking – both real-time and historical.
Following extensive research with Oracle DBAs on the need to provide an easier way to manage and report on Oracle RMAN backups, this beta is the culmination of that effort and we anticipate a lot of interest amongst Oracle DBAs.
Some of the things which DBAs, when interviewed about using Oracle RMAN, told us they were having challenges with:
- Multi-database reporting really doesn’t exist.
- Job schedules can sometimes not detect failed jobs.
- Oracle RMAN is complex and it easy to improperly configure it such that the backups are not safe.
- Diagnosing performance issues is also very difficult.
Doesn’t Toad already provide some support for Oracle RMAN?
Yes it does. Since Toad version 9.7, we have offered some limited support for Oracle RMAN by providing the ability to support the Oracle RMAN scripting language and through the provision of some basic Oracle RMAN scripts which can be launched directly from the Toad Database Browser window.
Launching an Oracle RMAN Hot Backup from the Toad Database Browser
RMAN incremental backup being initiated on an Oracle server
So what does Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle actually do?
Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle is essentially an Oracle RMAN backup reporting and analysis tool and is designed to provide the following benefits as a way to address the challenges associated with the traditional method of reporting on Oracle RMAN backups.
- Determine if your backup strategy is meeting your Oracle RMAN policies
- Avoid potential costly mistakes in your backup strategy and system configuration
- Quickly generate professional looking enterprise-wide backup reports
- Properly schedule backups to avoid bottlenecks
- Quickly determine storage and growth patterns for backup storage
- Easily determine bottlenecks in backup performance
Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle does not make any modifications to either the Oracle database or RMAN configuration. It is solely a read-only reporting tool.
Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle main dashboardWhen Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle is launched, a dashboard is displayed for all your registered databases. By default the databases are registered with the “Connect at Startup” flag set. In this case Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle connects to the database, queries the data dictionary and performs the policy and health checks. The summary is displayed under the Dashboard tab.
The following are Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle key features:
1. Oracle RMAN policy reporting
You can define policies that specify backup frequency, duration, retention, time-of-day, etc. Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle compares how the backups actually ran vs. these policies and flags policy violations.
Note: Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle is a reporting only utility. It does not run backups, change database parameters, change Oracle RMAN parameters or otherwise affect the behavior of Oracle RMAN. Setting up policies does not cause your backups to run but instead just reports if your backups are not meeting these policies. You must still perform your backups outside of Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle.
Oracle RMAN policy settings review2. Expert system health check
Having the ability to perform an expert health check on how you have your Oracle RMAN backups configured will quickly confirm whether there are any changes you need to make in order to ensure that backups are performed efficiently by making appropriate use of the database’s available resources (e.g. storage).
Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle examines your Oracle RMAN backup strategy and Oracle database configuration for possible weaknesses or points of failure. The results of this health check are presented along with detailed information allowing you to repair the issue. A lightweight workflow is provided allowing you to individually acknowledge or silence the warnings that are generated.
You can then navigate directly to a health check violation and either ignore or acknowledge.
Oracle RMAN Health Check showing violations and recommended actions
3. Multi-database reporting
Several multi-database views are available which provide summary reporting across all your managed databases including:
- Backup calendar and timeline view
- Storage view showing total database and backup storage
- Oracle RMAN Parameter view
- Oracle RMAN policy and health check violation view
This consolidated reporting will dramatically improve your productivity and save having to navigate extensively to obtain this information for each separate database.
Backup calendar and timeline viewThis view may be useful for scheduling backups to avoid resource contention on a central storage server. The time scale may also be adjusted to display the timeline in different granularities.
Alternate timeline view to intelligently schedule backups
Oracle RMAN Parameters view
4. Detailed database level views
While the Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle dashboard provides an essential overview of the Oracle RMAN backup state across all your managed databases, you still need a more granular view which provides in-depth information about the backups pertaining to a single database. These views include:
- High level summary information
- A backup calendar and timeline
- Views of backups displaying the associated pieces, datafiles, etc for each backup
- A view to search for backups containing particular datafiles, tablespaces, archive logs, etc.
- A block corruption view showing corrupted blocks and the associated database objects
- A backup growth chart indicating growth for both in size and duration
Detailed database level views5. Performance tracking
In order to help you see what’s happening with an Oracle RMAN backup which is actually running or recently completed, there are a number of visualization views available in Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle which present backup flows from both file level and device level.
These views provide you with in-depth information about performance pertaining to individual backup sets and will help identify bottlenecks or contention during the backup operation.
- Allows visualization of data flow during live and recent backups
- Displays progress indication of live backups
- Bottleneck and performance analysis
- View into to the raw performance tuning data
Performance assessment of an incremental backup (file and device level)6. Minimal Footprint
In keeping with the traditions of Toad for Oracle, Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle is designed to be lightweight, nimble and easy to use.
- Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle does not require the installation of any agents on the database server.
- No third tier repository is required.
- All of Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle’s reporting is accomplished via read-only access to the database.
- The Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle beta is distributed as a simple Windows application.
Sounds great! How do I get a copy?
Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle is available immediately and can be downloaded by visiting our Toad for Oracle community at the following link. http://toadfororacle.com/qbabeta.jspa
This Preview Edition is an extended beta version and is fully functional and free until May 3rd 2011. The commercial product is expected to be released on April 21st 2011.
On this page, there is also a short video which provides an overview of Quest Backup Reporter for Oracle to help you understand how it works.
2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Struggling to manage all your Oracle RMAN backups? The solution is right here!
Great. I have a question. I have backups running on different servers on each day. So I need a report to be generated and sent by mail by using the tool at a particular time as to what backups have been run from one particular time of the day to another time (say 5pm to next morning 8am). I am using the licensed QuestBrt tool.
By rosh on
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
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Re: Struggling to manage all your Oracle RMAN backups? The solution is right here!
Hi Rosh,
Actually, we already have some reporting and emailing enhancements on our roadmap for a future release! Would you need to have such a report scheduled so it runs automatically each week?
By Pockers on
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
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