Anyone using Oracle "in the cloud"?
From: Janine Sisk <janine_at_furfly.net>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:01:17 -0700
Message-Id: <2A6D411C-D329-490C-B880-F9C468AF00C3_at_furfly.net>
I'm doing an 11g install to an Amazon EC2 server, my first experience with both. At the moment I'm starting to think about backups. I know Oracle has a "Cloud Backup" product that will back up directly to S3, but it is unclear to me whether or not I would need a license to use it. Their FAQ says
> Do I need to license any Oracle products to be able backup my
> database to the Cloud?
> The Cloud Backup module is a part of Oracle Secure Backup family.
> Oracle Secure Backup is Oracle's next-generation tape backup
> management solution and it now provides customers the flexibility to
> back up data to either tape or the Cloud.
>
This doesn't tell me much. The only info I can find online about the Secure Backup product says "low-cost, per tape drive license". But there is no tape drive here, and you don't have to install the Secure Backup server, or even the usual client, just the Cloud Backup piece. The white paper on "Backup in the Cloud" describes signing up for S3, getting an OTN account, downloading the module, etc, with no mention of "oh by the way, call your salesman". So I'm not exactly sure if I need an additional license or not.
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:01:17 -0700
Message-Id: <2A6D411C-D329-490C-B880-F9C468AF00C3_at_furfly.net>
I'm doing an 11g install to an Amazon EC2 server, my first experience with both. At the moment I'm starting to think about backups. I know Oracle has a "Cloud Backup" product that will back up directly to S3, but it is unclear to me whether or not I would need a license to use it. Their FAQ says
> Do I need to license any Oracle products to be able backup my
> database to the Cloud?
> The Cloud Backup module is a part of Oracle Secure Backup family.
> Oracle Secure Backup is Oracle's next-generation tape backup
> management solution and it now provides customers the flexibility to
> back up data to either tape or the Cloud.
>
This doesn't tell me much. The only info I can find online about the Secure Backup product says "low-cost, per tape drive license". But there is no tape drive here, and you don't have to install the Secure Backup server, or even the usual client, just the Cloud Backup piece. The white paper on "Backup in the Cloud" describes signing up for S3, getting an OTN account, downloading the module, etc, with no mention of "oh by the way, call your salesman". So I'm not exactly sure if I need an additional license or not.
I am an outside contractor to all of my clients with no direct access to those who handle licensing; that, plus the belt-tightening everyone is doing, puts me in a position of assuming that I can't use any feature which requires an additional license. So, my questions:
- Does anyone know whether or not this feature has to be licensed separately?
- Has anyone developed any EC2 backup schemes they'd like to share, with or without Cloud Backup?
I've done quite a bit of research but most people using EC2 are using MySQL, and things are completely different for them. They just "freeze" the filesystem for a moment (assuming one is using the XFS filesystem) and back up the data files directly. I don't *think* that works for Oracle... not going to rely on it without knowing for sure, anyway.
janine
-- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-lReceived on Mon Aug 10 2009 - 19:01:17 CDT