E Oracle Secure Backup (OSB) Cloud Module

You need an OTN account for downloading the S3 Backup installer for the OSB Cloud Module. If you do not have an OTN account, you may register for one at: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/join/overview/index.html

You can download the installer from the OTN Cloud Computing Center home page.

You can open one at: http://aws.amazon.com. Click My Account and then select Security Credentials.

The account requires that you provide a means of payment for Amazon to charge for your AWS S3 usage.

You can use one of the following techniques to authenticate and access Amazon S3:

• AWS Identifiers

  You obtain these credentials by going to the AWS website at http://aws.amazon.com, selecting My Account, and then AWS Management Console.

  You need the following mandatory AWS identifiers that are assigned when you create your AWS account: Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

  Note: It is a good idea to secure these credentials since they authorize charges for all Amazon Web Services and enable access to RMAN backups stored on Amazon S3.

• AWS IAM role

  Enables Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) instance users to leverage the metadata service. When the EC2 instance is configured with an IAM role, applications running on EC2 can use temporary credentials associated with the IAM role to create backups to Amazon S3. EC2 stores the temporary credentials in a predetermined ___location in JSON format. The installer retrieves the temporary credentials and stores them in the Oracle wallet.

  The IAM role must have the privileges required to access Amazon S3.

  Provide the following parameters to use IAM roles: AWS IAM Role Name (mandatory) and Metadata URI for the specified IAM Role (optional).

If this is the first time you run the S3 Backup installer, Oracle recommends that you run it initially without any parameters to get a listing and explanation of the mandatory and optional parameters. Analyzing and reviewing this information before executing the S3 Backup installer helps to ensure a successful installation.

To run the S3 Backup installer without parameters, type:

% java -jar osbws_install.jar 

The following table provides an explanation for the various parameters used during installation.

Check and collect the relevant information for any optional parameters that you want to include. For example, you may need to know the proxy server name, port and credentials of your installation.

At this point, you are ready to execute the installer.

A preferred method is to include the command-line options in a file and secure access to the file with the appropriate operating system permissions:

% java -jar osbws_install.jar -ARGFILE filename

Another method is to embed the run command, parameters and values in a file that can be executed as either a shell script or a Windows batch file.

Follow these steps:

• Create a file

• Set file permissions to grant owner of the file exclusive access

  Note:

  Setting the file permissions to restrict access is critical since the file contains AWS credentials.

• Edit the file to contain a single line with the installer's run command and the mandatory parameters. You can compose a one-line invocation by populating the parameters with the information you obtained in the previous section.

• Execute the file as a shell script or Windows batch file

Note: To make the following example easier to read, $ORACLE_HOME is set to /orclhome. In your installation, the value of $ORACLE_HOME is something like /usr/oracle/product/11.2.0 (Linux).

To avoid having to provide the configuration information each time a backup is invoked, it is a good idea to store the OSB Cloud Module configuration information in the RMAN repository.

This example is for a pre-11g Release 2 database:

RMAN> configure channel device type sbt parms  
"SBT_LIBRARY=/orclhome/lib/libosbwsll.so
ENV=(OSB_WS_PFILE=/orclhome/dbs/osbwst1.ora)';

using target database control file instead of recovery catalog
new RMAN configuration parameters:

"SBT_LIBRARY=/orclhome/lib/libosbwsll.so 
ENV=(OSB_WS_PFILE=/orclhome/dbs/osbwst1.ora)';
new RMAN configuration parameters are successfully stored

When this example completes, the system is configured for OSB Cloud Module backups and you can use your usual RMAN backup and restore commands.

Note: For 11g Release 2 databases and later, you must use the SBT_PARMS parameter to specify environment variables.

You are now ready to connect to your target database and configure an RMAN channel. You must specify both the library and the configuration file in the command.

This example configures an RMAN channel for an Oracle 11g Release 2 database:

RMAN> run {
            allocate channel dev1 type
            sbt parms='SBT_LIBRARY=/orclhome/lib/libosbws11.so,
            SBT_PARMS=(OSB_WS_PFILE=/orclhome/dbs/osbwst1.ora)';
          }

At this point, you can issue your usual RMAN backup and restore commands.

Note: For Oracle 11g Release 2 databases and later, you must use the SBT_PARMS parameter for specifying environment variables. For pre-Oracle 11g Release 2 databases, you can still use the ENV parameter of the PARMS option to specify environment variables.