Snapshot on Oracle Standard Edition

Standby™ delivers more than gold standard Disaster Recovery for Oracle SE.

The Snapshot feature enables fast and easy creation of Reporting Replicas and Test/Dev Snapshots, extending the value of your Oracle infrastructure and standby environment.

What are Snapshots?

Snapshots are an exact replica of your production database at a point in time that can be shared within an organization for reporting, product development, or testing purposes. Snapshots are quick to create, light-weight, and function just like a normal database.

Standby^TM and its Snapshot feature enable you to offload resource-intensive tasks to your standby database and infrastructure that already exist for Disaster Recovery purposes.

Standby Snapshots use cases

Development or test environments
Traditionally, Dev/Test environments are refreshed regularly for developers requiring significant time and resources. Snapshots are a fast and efficient way to create short-lived Test/Dev environments of the DR standby database without impacting your primary environment.

Application upgrade testing
Test an upgrade quickly and easily prior to doing it on your production database. The read-write snapshot of your standby database is an exact copy of your primary and is ideal for application testing.

Disaster Recovery testing
Snapshots enable quick comprehensive testing with less disruption. A snapshot is taken, activated, and then application tests run. There is no effect on the primary or standby database.

Reporting or data extraction
Automated snapshots called ‘Reporting Replicas’ provide short-term, up-to-date live environments for simplifying data extracts and reporting. The Reporting Replica can be queried, data can be extracted, and reporting tasks carried out, all without impacting your primary database.

Why are Snapshots great?

Fast and easy

Snapshots can be quickly created, usually in a few minutes. Once created, the database in the snapshot can be immediately started and used.

Space efficient

Using “copy-on-write” technology, Snapshots can be created with little space.

Function like a database

The data is an exact replica of the production database and can be interrogated and queried like the it.

Offload performance intensive tasks

Snapshots utilize your standby (or cascading database) environment meaning you can offload previously performance intensive tasks.

No extra cost

Snapshot is included within your Standby^TM license and utilizes your standby infrastructure.

De-identify sensitive data

Configure your own unique actions to be automatically taken both prior to or immediately after the creation of each snapshot.

Two different types of Snapshots

Test/Dev Snapshots
A read-only, or read-write, copy of the standby database taken at a particular point in time.

Reporting Replicas
Automated Snapshots, called "Reporting Replicas", provide a constantly updated (eg every 10 minutes) read-only or read-write, copy of the standby database. They are primarily used for reporting but are not limited to this.

First, a Snapshot of the standby database is created. This Snapshot is the first of a Snapshot group. A new Snapshot is then added to this group on a fixed time interval (e.g. 10 minutes), up to a selected maximum number. A reporting replica will then automatically maintain this group of Snapshots at a fixed time interval, creating a new Snapshot and (if necessary) removing the oldest Snapshot from the group each time. Each Snapshot within a reporting replica can be individually queried, and used for data extraction and reporting tasks without impacting your primary database.

FAQs

Topics

What environments do Snapshots support?

Standby™ supports Snapshots on Linux environments only. Snapshots are only available for Oracle databases. Read all pre-requisites on the support page.

Can I pre/post process the data?

Yes, pre or post processing of the data using scripts is possible. An example use case for this would be the removal of confidential information when providing Test/Dev environments to developers.

What is the licensing for the Snapshot feature?

Snapshots, including 'Reporting Replicas' and 'Test/Dev Snapshots' are included within the Dbvisit Standby v10 license. Standby^TM is licensed per database. View the pricing page.

Do Snapshots work in the cloud?

Yes they will work if they are on Linux, are on a Single Logical Volume and are in a Volume group, and you have sufficient storage. View all requirements on the support page.