Peoplesoft on AWS

Here are some case studies and materials for running Oracle Peoplesoft on AWS:

1. Select Staffing presented along with AWS and DLZP. http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/dat202-using-amazon-rds-to-power-enterprise-applications-1-0

2. Data migration from on premise Oracle to Oracle AWS RDS (same technique can be used for EC2, in fact, with EC2 may be easier to just do an RMAN dump, FTP, SCP or Tsunami to transfer to AWS,) and restore using RMAN on EC2). http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/advanced-data-migration-techniques-for-amazon-rds

3. Best practices for Peoplesoft on premise to AWS done at Oracle OpenWorld last year by DLZP: http://www.slideshare.net/tomlaszewski/oracle-peoplesoft-on-aws

4. Test drive:http://aws.amazon.com/testdrive/oracle/

Backup of an Oracle DB on RDS and EC2

When you use RDS, the Oracle database is automatically backed up to S3 for you. You can also take a DB snapshot at anytime or schedule snap shots.  The cost of the backup is included in the price of the database.  You will be charged for the storage in S3 for snapshots.

Amazon RDS enables automated backups of your DB Instance with a 1 day retention period. Free backup storage is limited to the size of your provisioned database and only applies to active DB Instances. For example, if you have 10GB-months of provisioned database storage, AWS will provide at most 10GB-months of backup storage at no additional charge.

You can not use tools like Oracle RMAN or the Oracle Secure Backup for S3 to backup Oracle RDS.

Loading data from on premise Oracle Database to Oracle RDS using RMAN

An RMAN backupset can be loaded directly into RDS. However, you can still use RMAN as a mechanism to move an Oracle database from on premise to RDS.

First, move the data RMAN dump using Tsunami, Aspera, Attunity Cloudbeam, or stand protocols like FTP(s) or HTTP(s) which will be slower. More on moving data from on premise to AWS here: http://cloudconclave.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-premise-application-replication-and.html
OR
You can use Oracle Secure Backup to dump the database directly to S3.

Then load the data into using an Oracle Database instance running on EC2 using RMAN (if RMAN dump on EBS volumes) or Oracle Secure Backup if in S3.

You then load the data into RDS from the EC2 instance using one of the these options:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Oracle.Procedural.Importing.html

You may ask...why did you go through all this trouble of setting an Oracle database on EC2 when I can simply export/dump the data from the on premise Oracle DB and move to EBS or S3 and then load into RDS.  It is because an RMAN dump is much faster on the on premise side and RMAN produces a more compressed and portable database format to move across the internet to AWS.

You can also use this process to load the data using data pump and Oracle Managed Files:
http://cloudconclave.blogspot.com/2013/10/process-to-load-oracle-data-from-on.html

Native replication for replicating data into and out of RDS has announced in Sept 2012 and details can be found here:
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/09/migrate-mysql-data-to-amazon-rds-and-back.html
This is not yet available for Oracle RDS.

AWS EC2 Oracle Database backup

The two most common approaches for backing up Oracle databases hosted on EC2/EBS:  
1. The Oracle Secure Backup Cloud Module allows Oracle's Recovery Manager (RMAN) to backup/restore directly to/from S3.  https://aws.amazon.com/backup-storage/gsg-oracle-rman/ 
2. DBAs can put their tablespaces in hot backup mode, issue EBS snapshots using the EC2 CLI (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/OperationList-cmd.html), and then take the Oracle database out of hot backup mode as soon as the EC2 EBS snapshot API call returns.  While in hot backup mode, Oracle logs the full block images to the online and archived redo logs. There is a write up here on how this works:

http://www.bluegecko.net/oracle/oracle-tablespace-hot-backup-mode-revisited/

Oracle Secure Backup restore

A benchmark test using OSB, a DBA, was able to restore 3.8 terabytes in 2.5 hours over gigabit Ethernet. This amounts to 25 gigabytes per minute, or 422MB per second. This 2.5 hours using OSB and S3 compares to, conservatively, 10-15 hours that would be required to restore from tape.