Learning About Data Guard

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to helping you make informed choices to protect your site from disaster. One cannot think of a hosting solution to be used by potentially hundreds or more databases without proper, standardized planning for what to do when disaster strikes. In order to be prepared for the disaster situation, practice and documentation are crucial to successful handling of the crisis situation. In the Oracle world there are broadly speaking two different ways to achieve the goal of ensuring that your business applications can continue if the lights on your primary data center go out. The first one is the more obvious one to the Oracle database professional: application level replication. The most common representative of this approach is Oracle Data Guard. The second option available is to use application-agnostic storage array replication. The latter is very popular with large organizations that have long-term relations with the established storage vendors. Please note that the chapter you are about to read deals with Data Guard only.