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This article provides information about:

The Phoenix Backup Store is an Ubuntu based NAS device with Druva provided Phoenix Backup Store Debian package installed on it. After the administrators set up the NAS device, install the Debian package, and activate the Debian package on the device:

When an administrator adds a backup mount on the Management Console, it is created on the Phoenix Backup Store as a shared directory over the network. The shared directory serves as the mount point point, and the Oracle Database Administrator has to map it to the host where RMAN is running. When a backup job is run using RMAN, it creates an Oracle RMAN backup and stores it on the backup mount. The RMAN requires the read and write permissions on the backup mount.

Typically, the backup and restore of Oracle databases is handled using an Oracle provided backup and recovery manager call RMAN. RMAN provides utilities to the Oracle Database Administrators to run backup jobs of databases and create Oracle RMAN backups. The RMAN is connected to the databases, and a Database Administrator runs a backup job using it. The host on which the RMAN is running is called the RMAN host, and the backup mount is mapped to the host. After a backup job is run, RMAN creates an Oracle RMAN backup and stores it on the backup mount.

Two administrators are involved in the backup and restore of Oracle databases:

Oracle Database Administrators

Oracle Database Administrators use RMAN to run backups. They define when a backup job is run, and they use Druva provided APIs and scripts to ensure that the Oracle RMAN backups are stored on the backup mount.

Druva administrators

Druva administrators perform the following tasks:

For more information on the administrators, see Manage administrator accounts.

When an administrator adds a backup mount to a Phoenix Backup Store, the administrator provides retention settings. When a Database Administrator runs a backup job, RMAN creates an Oracle RMAN backup and stores it on the backup mount. The Phoenix Backup Store that hosts the backup mount creates a recovery point of the Oracle RMAN backup and uploads it to the Druva Cloud.

Retention defines the rules for retaining your backups (recovery point) within the storage. Use the retention period to define the duration for which you want to retain your historical backups.

The objective of retention is to keep important data for future access, depending on how critical it is. Retention also ensures that backups that are no longer required are cleaned from your storage periodically, resulting in less storage utilization and costs.

❗ Important

The retention period would not be honored for the most recent recovery point when a server or VM or backup set is disabled. This allows you to restore the latest recovery point later if required.

Retention should consider the value of your data and the compliance requirements. The different types of data will be retained for different durations. For example, a bank's retention period for customers' financial records is different from facilities inventory records.

The main factors to consider while defining a retention period are:

Druva follows the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention model wherein, in case of an overlap, the retention setting of the longer period (Son-Father-Grandfather relation) is considered. The recovery point is expired as per the settings of the higher period. For example, in case there is an overlap between the daily and weekly retention period, the weekly retention period is considered. So daily is the smallest unit and weekly overrides daily > monthly overrides weekly > yearly overrides monthly.

Also, Druva follows the Gregorian calendar for tracking days.

While backup schedules are configured on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis the last recovery point created by the backups on that particular day will be retained as per the retention setting.

You can define the following durations to retain recovery points.

The recovery point name displayed on the Management Console is recovery point creation time as per the server time zone, on which the backup occurred. Druva considers the time zone of the server for retaining the recovery points as per the retention setting.

If you are registering the server under default organization, Druva provides a default backup policy with the following retention settings:

📝 Note
​ The above default retention settings are applicable for Warm storage and Long Term Retention (LTR) tiers.

The following diagram illustrates the recovery points that will be available on a given day ( Feb 9 in this example) based on the retention settings you have configured. In this example the policy is created and backups start on Dec 30 of the previous year.

On 9 Feb you will have 17 recovery points or recovery points to restore as described in the table.

📝 Note
​Daily is the smallest unit and weekly overrides daily and monthly overrides weekly and yearly overrides monthly.

In continuation with the example above, so let us say malware was detected on 9 Feb evening. After investigation, it was discovered that the data till 7 Feb is corrupted. In that case, the recovery point available to you will be of 6 Feb which is available due to the daily recovery point. However, there could be a data loss of data backed between 7 Feb and 9 Feb.