Technical Brief. Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle

Transcription

1 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle Written by Tom Sager, DBA team leader E. ON U.S. Technical Brief

2 2009 Quest Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document contains proprietary information, protected by copyright. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted for any purpose other than the reader's personal use without the written permission of Quest Software, Inc. WARRANTY The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. Quest Software makes no warranty of any kind with respect to this information. QUEST SOFTWARE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF THE MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Quest Software shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or other damage alleged in connection with the furnishing or use of this information. TRADEMARKS All trademarks and registered trademarks used in this guide are property of their respective owners. World Headquarters: 5 Polaris Way Aliso Viejo, CA info@quest.com Please refer to our Web site ( for regional and international office information. Updated February 16, 2009 TBD-Unified-BackupRecovery-US-AG

3 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION...1 CHALLENGES OF DATABASE MANAGEMENT: DATA GROWTH AND DATA SECURITY...2 DATA GROWTH... 2 SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE... 3 DEVELOPING A BACKUP AND RECOVERY STRATEGY...4 REQUIREMENTS... 4 BACKUP AND RECOVERY METHODS... 4 LITESPEED TO THE RESCUE...5 LITESPEED ADVANTAGES... 6 ENCRYPTION LEVELS... 6 SETTING THE ENCRYPTION AND COMPRESSION LEVELS... 7 SQL Server... 7 Oracle... 9 OBJECT-LEVEL RECOVERY SQL Server Oracle USING LITESPEED: REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES NEED BOTH COMPRESSION AND ENCRYPTION BUT BACKUP WINDOW IS SHORT NEED COMPRESSION AND HAVE PLENTY OF TIME NEED SPEED MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE SUMMARY ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT QUEST SOFTWARE, INC CONTACTING QUEST SOFTWARE CONTACTING QUEST SUPPORT i

4 Technical Brief INTRODUCTION Database backup and recovery is becoming more difficult and more complicated. Two factors are putting a double whammy on today s IT shops like never before: (1) the unabated explosion in data growth and (2) the ever-increasing need for data security. Further complicating these challenges is the fact that most IT shops use more than one database management system. As a database administrator (DBA) in a multi-platform shop, I have responsibility for developing and managing a database backup and recovery strategy that covers both Oracle and SQL Server while addressing our continued data growth and need for security. This technical brief explains how I use Quest s LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle to effectively manage my fast-growing databases and comply with security requirements. 1

5 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle CHALLENGES OF DATABASE MANAGEMENT: DATA GROWTH AND DATA SECURITY Data Growth Everyone knows that the volume of data managed by IT shops is growing, but by how much? To find out, I have been tracking the size of the production database servers in my company. Figure 1 shows the growth of one group of servers: Figure 1. Recorded database growth Plotting that data on a curve reveals the projected growth of those servers for the next few years: Projected Production Database Growth Terabytes Expon. (Terabytes) Figure 2. Projected database growth 2

6 Technical Brief Even I was surprised at the curve of that trend line! I knew we had more data, but I didn t realize it was that much more. The data growth we are experiencing truly is exponential (an often overused term). If the projection is correct, I will be faced with backing up close to 30TB of databases within the next three years. Security and Compliance DBAs not only need to manage more data but we must also meet an increasing number of complex compliance and security standards. For example, I don t yet encrypt all database backups, but that is clearly going to be a requirement in the future. Moreover, like many DBAs, I must manage multiple groups of databases with different auditing, security, and compliance requirements. In particular, I have in-scope applications that are subject to security requirements beyond the norm, and this list of in-scope applications is growing every year. Instead of treating the in-scope applications in a special way, I would prefer to simply subject all applications to the requirements of most secure application, and encrypt them all to the same standard. 3

7 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle DEVELOPING A BACKUP AND RECOVERY STRATEGY Requirements A backup and recovery strategy must address both the data growth issue and the security issue. Specifically, a good database backup and recovery strategy must do all of the following: 1. Provide a similar level of service for all platforms 2. Enable the DBA to maintain control over the backup and recovery operations and over the backup files themselves 3. Maintain data security 4. Minimize storage needs 5. Minimize backup times 6. Minimize recovery times Most of these points are obvious, but the second point DBA control is often overlooked. If performing a backup and recovery requires more than one group, then both the chances of error and the average human response time will increase dramatically. Ideally, a single DBA should be able to perform a complete backup and recovery operation alone, without needing to coordinate with or enlist the aid of someone in another group. Backup and Recovery Methods Database backup and recovery methods can be divided into these four categories: 1. Native database backup utilities 2. Disk-storage system split-mirroring 3. Tape-storage system backup via DB agent 4. Third-party database backup software For an in-depth look at the relative advantages and disadvantages of each, see the Quest white paper Backup and Recovery Options in a Multi-Platform Environment. The conclusion of that paper is that only a third-party product with the appropriate set of features is really capable supporting a backup and recovery strategy that effectively addresses all six needs listed above. 4

8 Technical Brief LITESPEED TO THE RESCUE Fortunately, quality third-party backup and recovery products exist, because the need for them is becoming urgent. Exponential growth is like a ticking time bomb; it can quickly overwhelm backup and recovery processes with little warning. Getting those processes under control now, before a crisis manifests itself, is the only responsible thing to do. Quest Software s LiteSpeed products fit the bill perfectly for my organization. We use two products: LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle. They share the same guts a rock-solid compression/encryption engine with a proven track record. LiteSpeed for SQL Server has been a market-leading backup and recovery utility for SQL Server for many years now. I have used it successfully to keep my largest SQL Server databases in check, eliminating the need to pursue another, less desirable backup and recovery approach (like SAN split-mirroring or direct-to-tape backups). While we originally adopted LiteSpeed to manage increasing database size, in recent years, we rely just as much on its encryption functionality, due to stricter compliance requirements. Having SQL Server backups under control left me wanting on the Oracle side. Some of our Oracle databases are even larger than our biggest SQL Server database, and while the native Oracle backup utility (RMAN) is capable of compression, it is painfully slow for very large databases, so slow as to be unusable. Moreover, Oracle does not provide the means to encrypt a backup without an extra cost option (Oracle Advanced Security). Having capabilities with some applications but not others was becoming a serious issue. The auditing and security groups are not generally interested in excuses about why application A s database backup is encrypted while equally important application B s database is not. I urgently needed equivalent functionality on both database platforms. Now, with the release of Quest Software s LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle, I can provide the same level of compression and encryption on all of my databases. 5

9 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle LiteSpeed Advantages LiteSpeed provides consistent compression and encryption for SQL Server and Oracle, along with efficiency: Compression. LiteSpeed uses the same compression engine on both the Oracle and SQL Server platform, so the compression ratio for like data is reliably similar on both databases. Encryption. LiteSpeed provides encryption for both SQL Server and Oracle. No matter what standard you adopt in your shop, encryption can be consistently applied across both database platforms. Efficiency. LiteSpeed performs backup compression on the database server, in memory, before the backup is written to disk or shipped across the network to a tape system. All other methods require more storage and/or greater network utilization because the compression occurs after the backup is created. Encryption Levels LiteSpeed offers the following encryption levels: AES128 (Advanced Encryption Standard, 128-bit) The most commonly used encryption cipher for software implementations. The 128 indicates that a 128-bit key is used. This is strong enough for the US government to use for information classified as SECRET. AES192 (Advanced Encryption Standard, 192-bit) AES256 (Advanced Encryption Standard, 256-bit) The same ciphers but with longer keys. Certified by the US government for use with information classified as TOP SECRET. 3DES (Triple Data Encryption Standard) Seems to be falling out of use in favor of AES. Widely thought to be less secure than AES. LiteSpeed for SQL Server supports some additional proprietary encryption levels (RC2 and RC4). 6

10 Setting the Encryption and Compression Levels Technical Brief Both LiteSpeed products use the same engine to perform encryption. However, the method for configuring the encryption and compression levels is different for SQL Server and Oracle, so it can be similar to other operations on each platform. SQL Server In the SQL Server world, you can set the encryption and compression levels using the LiteSpeed Console on the Windows Server where LiteSpeed is installed, as shown below: Figure 3. Setting the encryption and compression levels for SQL Server using the LiteSpeed Console 7

11 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle Alternatively, if a backup is executed from within a pre-existing SQL script, the encryption level can be set via an argument in the xp_backup_database extended procedure, as shown below: Figure 4. Setting the encryption level for SQL Server using the xp_backup_database extended procedure 8

12 Technical Brief Oracle In the Oracle world, you can set the encryption and compression levels using the leo configure command in a command-line terminal session: Figure 5. Setting the encryption and compression levels for Oracle 9

13 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle Object-level Recovery SQL Server Natively, Oracle has the edge over SQL Server when it comes to object-level recovery. However, LiteSpeed for SQL Server makes recovering individual objects in SQL Server even easier than it is using Oracle s import utility. In fact, objectlevel recovery is one of the big advantages LiteSpeed for SQL Server has over its competitors. The details are beyond the scope of this paper, but the screen shot below demonstrates just how rich this particular feature is. Figure 6. LiteSpeed for SQL Server s object-level recovery is feature-rich. 10

14 Technical Brief Oracle LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle doesn t really improve on the feature set of Oracle s import utility, but it does dramatically improve the performance. For example, to recover a single table from an Oracle export file, the import utility must read the entire file. If that file is 300GB, processing it takes a long time, and a significant portion of that time is on I/O. Recovering a LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle file is much faster: the 300GB file has been compressed to about 30GB, and therefore will require only 1/10th the I/O to read through. Object-level recovery via LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle involves a simple import utility to restore a table back from an export file. The only difference is the imp command is prefaced with leo : Figure 7. Oracle object-level recovery 11

15 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle USING LITESPEED: REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES To wrap up, I offer several scenarios I have addressed with LiteSpeed. Need Both Compression and Encryption but Backup Window is Short This is the most frequent scenario. Most of our in-scope of compliance applications have large databases and are very busy, with a limited window of availability for backups and other maintenance. Therefore, we need the backup completed as quickly as possible, while at the same time ensuring it is encrypted and compressed to reduce storage needs. LiteSpeed is the best choice for us in this scenario. LiteSpeed encrypts both our Oracle and SQL Server databases to the same encryption level, without the need for extra-cost Oracle options, and compresses them to about 10-30% of their original size just as fast as the uncompressed, unencrypted native backup utility (and often faster). Need Compression and Have Plenty of Time We do have some large databases that see relatively light use. This is typical when an application stores a lot of data but accesses it infrequently, such as lookups on an historical billing database. In these cases, our primary goal is to reduce the storage needs of the backup as much as possible. Therefore, we want to maximize the compression, even if that means increased elapsed time and processor utilization. LiteSpeed addresses this situation nicely by allowing us to configure a higher compression level on both platforms. Need Speed More than Anything Else In some cases, the elapsed time of the backups is causing us the most pain. The speed of a backup depends on the size of the backup, disk I/O speed, processor speed, system utilization by other processes, and the compression and encryption levels. In most cases, we can achieve the fast backups we need with LiteSpeed by using the minimum compression level and no encryption. In fact, sometimes the backups are dramatically faster. 12

16 Technical Brief SUMMARY Satisfying the requirements of a multi-platform database backup and recovery strategy requires software designed for that purpose. LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle are the perfect team, providing all of the functionality and performance needed for a best-practice backup and recovery strategy. 13

17 Unify Your Backup and Recovery Strategy with LiteSpeed for SQL Server and LiteSpeed Engine for Oracle ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Sager is a DBA team leader at E.ON U.S, a diversified energy services company. He has been with the company for 17 years, in application development, database administration and leadership roles. Tom has technical expertise in performance tuning, high availability and disaster recovery and his team also specializes in managing diverse database environments with mixed SQL Server, Oracle and DB2 environments. Tom is a prolific author who has published more than 50 articles on SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, mainframe, Windows and Unix. Tom is a member of PASS and has served on its board. He is also a member of IOUG and Quest s Association of SQL Server Experts. 14

18 Technical Brief ABOUT QUEST SOFTWARE, INC. Quest Software, Inc., a leading enterprise systems management vendor, delivers innovative products that help organizations get more performance and productivity from their applications, databases, Windows infrastructure and virtual environments. Quest also provides customers with client management through its ScriptLogic subsidiary and server virtualization management through its Vizioncore subsidiary. Through a deep expertise in IT operations and a continued focus on what works best, Quest helps more than 100,000 customers worldwide meet higher expectations for enterprise IT. Quest Software helps organizations deliver, manage and control complex database environments through award-winning products for Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2, Sybase and MySQL. Quest Software can be found in offices around the globe and at Contacting Quest Software Phone: Mail: Web site (United States and Canada) info@quest.com Quest Software, Inc. World Headquarters 5 Polaris Way Aliso Viejo, CA USA Please refer to our Web site for regional and international office information. Contacting Quest Support Quest Support is available to customers who have a trial version of a Quest product or who have purchased a commercial version and have a valid maintenance contract. Quest Support provides around the clock coverage with SupportLink, our web self-service. Visit SupportLink at From SupportLink, you can do the following: Quickly find thousands of solutions (Knowledgebase articles/documents). Download patches and upgrades. Seek help from a Support engineer. Log and update your case, and check its status. View the Global Support Guide for a detailed explanation of support programs, online services, contact information, and policy and procedures. The guide is available at: Support Guide.pdf 15