Home > Storage > Data Storage Essentials > AppSync > Dell AppSync: Integration with Oracle Database Server > Mount operation
The mount operation is how the copy is processed on the mount host. This action can be a copy that is mounted and left alone, cataloged with RMAN, repurposed, or presented with scripts for manual recovery scenarios. Often, all that is required of AppSync is to mount the copy to an alternate location or host. Once it is complete, a third-party backup utility can apply its own processing to complete a backup to an alternate location. However, there are other mounting scenarios that require AppSync to perform an automated application recovery of the Oracle database. In other words, it presents a copied database environment that is ready for processing at an alternate location. Different scenarios require this procedure in different ways, and AppSync can accommodate different types of scenarios and needs.
The AppSync Oracle plug-in considers many parameters when performing these different mounting operations which are depicted in the following sections.
This process is the simplest form of mounting. It performs no database recovery and does not generate any scripts. It is used for manual mount operations where the intended use of the mounted copy falls outside the primary backup of AppSync or recovery use cases. These use cases could include a granular restore using RMAN, or most often, mounting a copy so another application can copy it off primary storage. This option is not supported if the production database resides on ASM disk groups, because there are no file systems to mount. For ASM, you must use one of the following options.
When choosing to catalog with RMAN, AppSync performs the following operations:
catalog datafilecopy
catalog archivelog
This cataloging allows administrators to use the following RMAN capabilities along with the mounted copy:
list datafilecopy all;
restore/recover datafile X
restore/recover tablespace X
blockrecover datafile X block Y
See the Oracle RMAN documentation for more help with commands and syntax. RMAN restore operations are possible if the AppSync copy stays mounted or accessible to the production host.
AppSync can help you skip cataloging datafiles. This setting is available under the RMAN Settings section after you set the RMAN-specific connection settings. This setting is not enabled by default, meaning that AppSync catalogs the datafiles.
The Block Change Tracking (BCT) file can improve incremental backup performance by avoiding complete scans of the data blocks of the source of the backup. In this case, the source of the backup would be the AppSync copy which was mounted to a host with the Create RMAN Catalog Entry option.
While AppSync does not integrate directly with RMAN backups, it facilitates its integration by cataloging the backup. AppSync gets the database to a mounted state and adjusts the datafile paths before cataloging with RMAN. It copies the BCT file to the mount host and adjusts its location by using the alter database rename file SQL*Plus command.
Whenever AppSync unmounts an Oracle copy that is mounted using the RMAN Catalog option, the copy is uncatalogued from RMAN to indicate that it is no longer available for the recovery operation.
While integrating with RMAN, the following restrictions apply to the Catalog with RMAN mount option:
The most common mount operation in AppSync is to mount and recover the database on a mount host. AppSync applies redo and archive logs if hot backup mode was selected, or recovers the database using the online redo logs if hot backup mode was not used. AppSync presents a mounted database matching the point in time when the copy was created.
There are several options that are covered in the Recovery Settings section, which allows you to customize the behavior of this operation using AppSync.
The manual recovery option is similar to the file system mount option because it does not start the Oracle instance and does not recover the database. It prepares some steps for you to manually recover the database, if required.
See AppSync User and Administration Guide for more details.
This option is used when the database must not be recovered or started and you want to preserve the original unaltered state of the copy, but also have some expanded recovery options available if required.