Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation
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About Backup and Recovery on Autonomous Database

Describes Autonomous Database backup options.

All backups taken and managed by Oracle in Autonomous Database are immutable. Immutable backups cannot be deleted or modified.

Backups are designed to be highly durable, as follows:

  • In regions with multiple availability domains, backups are automatically replicated across availability domains.

  • In regions with a single availability domain, backups are automatically replicated across fault domains.

Automatic Backups

Autonomous Database performs periodic backups including full, cumulative, and incremental backups, to ensure data reliability and recoverability.

The choices for automatic backups are different depending on your compute model:

  • OCPU compute model

    Autonomous Database automatically backs up your database for you. The retention period for backups is 60 days. You can restore and recover your database to any point-in-time in this retention period.

  • ECPU compute model

    By default Autonomous Database automatically backs up your database for you and the retention period for backups is 60 days. Optionally, you can choose the backup retention period in days, from 1 to 60. You can restore and recover your database to any point-in-time in the specified retention period.

Billing for automatic backups depends on the compute model that you select when you provision or clone an Autonomous Database instance:

  • OCPU compute model: the storage for automatic backups is included in the cost of database storage.

  • ECPU compute model: the storage for backups is billed separately and in addition to database storage.

See How Is Autonomous Database Billed? for more information.

Immutable Backup Retention Option

To protect your data, you can enable the Immutable backup retention option to lock the automatic backup retention period. If locked, Autonomous Database does not allow changes to the retention period for automatic backups. This prevents any unauthorized removal of older backups by modification of the backup retention period.

Note

After setting Immutable backup retention, you cannot disable this option or change the retention period. To disable Immutable backup retention or to change the backup retention period, file a Service Request at Oracle Cloud Support.

If you enable cross-region disaster recovery or backup replication and you set the Immutable backup retention option, the current primary's backup retention period remains locked before or after a switchover or failover.

The immutable backup retention option is applicable for automatic backups only and does not affect long-term backups.

Long-Term Backups

Using the long-term backup feature you can create a long-term backup as a one-time backup or as scheduled long-term backup. You select the retention period for long-term backups in the range of a minimum of 3 months up to a maximum of 10 years.

See About Long-Term Backups on Autonomous Database for more information.

Recovery

You can initiate recovery for your Autonomous Database using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console. Autonomous Database automatically restores and recovers your database to the point-in-time you specify or using the backup you select from a list of backups.

See Restore and Recover your Autonomous Database for more information.

Clone from a Backup

You can use either an automatic backup or a long-term backup to create a clone of your database.

See Clone an Autonomous Database from a Backup for more information.

Listing Backups

The list of backups available for recovery is shown on the Autonomous Database details page under Backups. Click Backups under Resources to show the backups.

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Console Autonomous Database details page, in the Backup area shows the Total backup storage field. This fields shows the total storage being billed, including for automatic backups and if there are long-term backups, this also includes the long term backup storage.

See View Backup Information and Backups on Autonomous Database for more information.

  • About Long-Term Backups on Autonomous Database
    Using the long-term backup feature you can create a long-term backup as a one-time backup or as scheduled long-term backup. You select the retention period for long-term backups in the range of a minimum of 3 months up to a maximum of 10 years.

Parent topic: Backup and Restore Autonomous Database Instances

About Long-Term Backups on Autonomous Database

Using the long-term backup feature you can create a long-term backup as a one-time backup or as scheduled long-term backup. You select the retention period for long-term backups in the range of a minimum of 3 months up to a maximum of 10 years.

Autonomous Database takes scheduled long-term backups automatically according to the schedule you create: one-time, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

You can create a new database by cloning from a long-term backup. You cannot use a long-term backup to recover or restore the same database where the long-term backup was created.

Long-term backup billing:

  • ECPU compute model: Long-term backup storage is billed in addition to your database storage. The total of your automatic backups and long-term backups will be billed additionally as backup storage.

    See ECPU Compute Model Billing Information for more information about how backup storage is billed.

  • OCPU compute model: Using the OCPU compute model, long-term backups are billed in addition to your database storage and long term backup storage is billed at the same rate as database storage. Long-term backup storage is billed based on the storage usage, rounded to the nearest Terabyte. If your long-term backup storage usage is 0.5 TB, you are billed for 1 TB (at the same rate as database storage).

    For example, if you provision your Autonomous Database with 3 TB of storage and you create several long-term backups amounting to 1.2 TB, you are billed for a total of 5 TB of storage, as follows:

    • 3 TB (the provisioned storage)

      plus

    • 2 TB (1.2TB of long-term backups rounded up)

    See OCPU Compute Model Billing Information for more information about how backup storage is billed.

Each long term backup is a standalone backup that allows you to create a point-in-time clone, based on the long-term backup timestamp.

See Create Long-Term Backups on Autonomous Database for more information.

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