Oracle Data Guard • Oracle’s primary disaster recovery solution – Complimentary to RAC high availability solution – May also be used to maintain separate reporting instance(s) • Provides one or more “standby” copies of the primary production database – Physical (Identical structure as primary) – Logical (Index/Schema differences) • Production workload can be failed over to a standby database if the primary database becomes unavailable • Multiple Log Capture and Log Apply options – Synchronous or asynchr onous log data transmission – Continuous or deferred log apply
Data divergence (1 of 2) • Typically, the consistent state of a standby database will “lag” the consistent state of the primary database – If updates are actively being applied to the standby, there may only be a few seconds of lag time – If updates are not actively being applied to the standby, the lag could be hours (or days) • Might be used to protect against application induced data corruption • Might be used to provide “end of day” image for reporting purposes • During a failover/switchover operation, the greater the degree of data divergence, the long er the time required to br ing the standby up to the most recent consistent state possible – The degree of data divergence is not related to data loss – only failover time
Physical standby • A “Physical Standby” is physically id entical to the primary database – Block for block byte match – Identical database schemas – including indexes • Standby Modes: – Redo Apply • Redo data is actively being applied to the standby • The standby database is not accessible by users/applications – Open Read-Only • Redo apply activity is deferred • The standby database is accessible for read-only (query) access
– Open Read/Write • The standby database is accessible for read & write purposes • If flashed back to prior state, may again be used for physical standby
Logical standby • A “Logical Standby” does not have to be physically identical to the primary database – Schema can be altered, e.g. add indexes or materialized views – Updates are applied to a logical standby by replaying the SQL statements executed on the primary database – Logical Standby database available for read access, even when SQL statements are being replayed.