Oracle Essentials, 5th Edition

Chapter 11. Oracle and High Availability

The data stored in your Oracle databases is one of your organization’s most valuable assets. Protecting and providing timely access to this data when it is needed for business decisions is crucial for any Oracle site.

As an Oracle database administrator, system administrator, or system architect, you’ll probably use a variety of techniques to ensure that your data is adequately protected from catastrophe. Of course, implementing proper backup operations is the foundation of any availability strategy, but there are other ways to avoid a variety of possible outages that could range from simple disk failures to a complete failure of your primary site. In addition, there are software solutions that can help avoid the loss of availability that these failures can create.

Computer hardware is, by and large, extremely reliable, and that can tempt you to postpone thinking about disaster recovery and high availability. Most software is also very reliable, and the Oracle database protects the integrity of the data it holds even in the event of software failure. However, hardware and software will fail occasionally. The more complicated the infrastructure, the greater the likelihood of downtime at the worst time.

The difference between inconvenience and disaster is often the presence or absence of adequate recovery plans and options. This chapter should help you understand all of the options available when deploying Oracle so you can choose the best approach ...