Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Use Oracle Data Guard on a DB System

Oracle Data Guard ensures high availability, data protection, and disaster recovery for enterprise data.

The Data Guard implementation requires two databases: one in a primary role and one in a standby role. The two databases, primary database and standby database, together make a Data Guard association. Most of your applications access the primary database, while the standby database is a transactionally consistent copy of the primary database.

The Data Guard maintains the standby database by transmitting and applying redo data from the primary database. If the primary database becomes unavailable, then you can use Data Guard to switch or fail over the standby database to the primary role.

Note

The standby databases in OCI are physical standbys.

This article explains how to use the Console to manage Data Guard associations in your DB system.

For more information on Data Guard, see Introduction to Oracle Data Guard.

Required IAM Policy

To use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you must be granted security access in a policy by an administrator. This access is required whether you're using the Console or the REST API with an SDK, CLI, or other tool. If you get a message that you don’t have permission or are unauthorized, verify with your administrator what type of access you have and which compartment to work in.

If you're new to policies, see Getting Started with Policies and Common Policies.

Prerequisites and General Information

A Data Guard implementation requires two DB systems, one containing the primary database and one containing the standby database. When you enable Data Guard for a database, a new DB system with the standby database is created and associated with the primary database.

Note

A Data Guard configuration is limited to one standby database for each primary database.

Requirement details are as follows:

  • Both the DB systems must be in the same compartment.
  • The database versions and editions must be identical. Data Guard does not support Oracle Database Standard Edition. (Active Data Guard requires Enterprise Edition Extreme Performance.)
  • Each database in a Data Guard association must have a unique name (DB_UNIQUE_NAME) value that is not in use by other databases in the DB systems that house the Data Guard association. However, the primary and standby database can use the same database name DB_NAME value.
  • The database edition determines whether Active Data Guard (ADG) can be used. ADG is only available with Enterprise Edition Extreme Performance. If you are using the BYOL licensing model and if your license does not include ADG, then you must ensure that ADG is not enabled when configuring Data Guard for Enterprise Edition Extreme Performance. Alternately, you can use Enterprise Edition or Enterprise Edition High Performance, which do not enable ADG by default. See Use Oracle Data Guard with the Database CLI.
  • If your primary and standby databases are in the same region, then both must use the same virtual cloud network (VCN).
  • If your primary and standby databases are in different regions, then you must peer the virtual cloud networks (VCNs) for each database. See Remote VCN Peering using an RPC.
  • Configure the security list ingress and egress rules for the subnets of both DB systems in the Data Guard association to enable TCP traffic to move between the applicable ports. Ensure that the rules you create are stateful (the default).

    For example, if the subnet of the primary DB system uses the source CIDR 10.0.0.0/24 and the subnet of the standby DB system uses the source CIDR 10.0.1.0/24, then create rules as shown in the subsequent example.

Note

The egress rules in the example show how to enable TCP traffic only for port 1521, which is a minimum requirement for the Data Guard to work. If TCP traffic is already enabled on all of your outgoing ports (0.0.0.0/0), then you do not need to explicitly add these specific egress rules.

Security List for Subnet on the Primary DB System 

Ingress Rules:
	Stateless: No
	Source: 10.0.1.0/24
	IP Protocol: TCPSource Port Range: All 
	Destination Port Range: 1521
	Allows: TCP traffic for ports: 1521

Egress Rules:
	Stateless: No
	Destination: 10.0.1.0/24 
	IP Protocol: TCP 
	Source Port Range: All
	Destination Port Range: 1521
	Allows: TCP traffic for ports: 1521

Security List for Subnet on the Standby DB System 

Ingress Rules:	
	Stateless: No
	Source: 10.0.0.0/24 
	IP Protocol: TCP 
	Source Port Range: All 
	Destination Port Range: 1521
	Allows: TCP traffic for ports: 1521

Egress Rules:
	Stateless: No
	Destination: 10.0.0.0/24 
	IP Protocol: TCP 
	Source Port Range: All
	Destination Port Range: 1521
	Allows: TCP traffic for ports: 1521

For information about creating and editing rules, see Security Lists.

Availability Domain and Fault Domain Considerations for Oracle Data Guard

Oracle recommends that the DB system that contains the standby database be in a different availability domain from that of the DB system containing the primary database to improve availability and disaster recovery. If you enable Oracle Data Guard for a database and your standby database is in the same availability domain as the primary database (either by choice, or because you are working in a single availability domain region), then Oracle recommends that you place the standby database in a different fault domain from that of the primary database.

Note

If your primary and standby databases are two-node Oracle RAC databases and both are in the same availability domain, then only one of the two nodes of the standby database can be in a fault domain that does not include any other nodes from either the primary or standby database. This is because each availability domain has only three fault domains, and the primary and standby databases have a combined total of four nodes. For more information on availability domains and fault domains, see Regions and Availability Domains.

Use the API

For information about using the API and signing requests, see REST APIs and Security Credentials. For information about SDKs, see Software Development Kits and Command Line Interface.

Use these API operations to manage Data Guard associations:

  • CreateDataGuardAssociation
  • GetDataGuardAssociation
  • ListDataGuardAssociations
  • SwitchoverDataGuardAssociation
  • FailoverDataGuardAssociation
  • ReinstateDataGuardAssociation
  • TerminateDbSystem

For the complete list of APIs for the Database service, see Database Service API.