High Availability Tech Tips

Current Tip

Implementing Data Guard? What you need to know
Planning a Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy for your Oracle database may appear daunting but the good news is that Oracle Data Guard is a straightforward application of Oracle technologies, used to maintain one or more synchronized copies of your production database. This lets you leverage existing DBA skills already in-house, and gives your DBA team complete control over your standby databases. You will simultaneously increase data protection and high availability, while reducing cost and business risk compared to using traditional DR solutions implemented in-house or outsourced to 3rd party DR service providers. This overview covers the main points you need to consider to get your Data Guard configuration up and running.

Previous Tips

Data Protection: The Oracle Data Guard Difference - It's Not Just About Disasters
Oracle Data Guard is about much more than disaster protection. It protects data and system availability from a wide range of potential events that can cause system downtime leading to business disruption and customer dissatisfaction. This tech tip shares actual customer experiences and helps explain the Data Guard difference compared to some other data protection solutions available today.

Technical Comparison of Oracle Data Guard vs. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring
This article provides a comprehensive technical differentiation between Oracle Data Guard and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring.

Technical Comparison of Oracle Data Guard vs. IBM DB2 HADR
This article provides a comprehensive technical differentiation between Oracle Data Guard and IBM DB2 HADR.

Oracle Database 10g and Low Cost Storage
The trend in the storage industry has always been that as the disk capacity continues to increase, the price per storage continues to decrease.  Today you can purchase a 250GB disk drive for less than $500, and six months from now you probably can purchase a bigger disk drive for even less money.  Low cost storage does not necessarily mean low performance or reliability.

Reorganizing the Database Whilst Users Are Changing Data
There was a time when computer systems were taken offline, overnight or at weekends, so that system maintenance could be performed. Today we live in a very different world where systems have to be constantly available because people expect to be able to do their online banking or Internet shopping, late at night, or on a Sunday morning. Oracle Online Redefinition was introduced in Oracle 9i and with each release of Oracle, it has been enhanced such that it offers a comprehensive range of features for reorganizing the database for both physical and database schema changes without requiring users to disconnect from the database.

Oracle9 i Flashback Query - Fast Row-level Recovery
Several leading IT studies indicate that up to 40% of database downtime is attributed to human errors. It's not just the end users making the mistakes; it is the well trained IT professional. We are all human and humans make mistakes. If only it were as easy to undo a mistake as it was to make it! Flashback Query addresses the unavoidable human element, by providing an easy, fast method of querying data, as it existed in the past.

Oracle9i Data Guard - Not Your Father's Log Shipping
Oracle9 i Data Guard includes many features that automate the maintenance of a standby database and enable zero data loss disaster recovery configurations. This Tech-Tip helps explain the benefits of using LGWR, and provides a simple method to evaluate network performance of a Data Guard configuration under a production workload.

New Backup & Recovery Features in Enterprise Manager 10g
Enterprise Manager (EM) offers a number of features to assist DBAs with the management of database backup and recovery, an essential component of an overall high availability strategy. These features include management of backup set/image copies, a pre-configured backup strategy, point-in-time recovery, and new flashback capabilities.

Oracle Database 10g Cross Platform Transportable Tablespace
Moving data using transportable tablespaces can be much faster than performing either an export/import or unload/load of the same data. This is because transporting a tablespace only requires the copying of datafiles and integrating the tablespace structural information. You can also use transportable tablespaces to move both table and index data, thereby avoiding the index rebuilds you would have to perform when importing or loading table data.

Oracle Flashback Technology
In the past it might take minutes to damage a database but hours to repair it. In many cases the time to correct errors using Flashback equals the time it took to make the error. Flashback is also extremely easy to use and a single short command can be used to recover the entire database instead of performing complex media recovery. Flashback provides fine-grained surgical analysis and repair for localized damage - like when the wrong customer order is deleted.

Network Bandwidth Implications of Oracle Data Guard
Oracle Data Guard is Oracle's data protection and disaster recovery solution. One of the frequent questions that customers ask the Data Guard team is how much network bandwidth is required by Data Guard. A variation of the same question is: Can the network link between the production (or primary site) and disaster recovery (DR or secondary site) data center support a Data Guard configuration?