The MAA Platinum reference architecture has the potential to provide zero downtime for outages and planned maintenance activities that are not achievable with the Gold architecture. The Platinum architecture builds on the Gold architecture by adding Oracle GoldenGate replication to eliminate downtime for migrations, application upgrades, and database upgrades. Each Oracle GoldenGate database is protected by a standby database to enable zero or near data loss in case of database, cluster, or site failure.
Oracle GoldenGate provides the following benefits:
- Uni-directional or bi-directional, replication allowing reads and updates in any replica if desired
- Replicas can run on different platforms, database versions, or database or application configurations, allowing for online migration and database and application upgrades
- Replicas are online, so applications can switch over with zero downtime during outages and planned maintenance activities (note that the application switchover must be customized, rather than built in as it is with Application Continuity)
Unlike the other MAA architectures, application considerations are required to integrate Oracle GoldenGate into the architecture, especially if there's a need to switch over to other replicas. Global Data Services, or custom application service management may be required to achieve zero or minimum application downtime for activities such as migration, database upgrade, or site switch when one replica is down. Also, if multiple replicas are updated concurrently at any point, conflict detection and resolution must be configured.
To address zero downtime application upgrade, the best solution is to make application changes on an alternative primary database replica and then switch over from the primary database to the alternative primary database replica when all transactions are synchronized.
As shown in the table below, the MAA Platinum level of service addresses the most mission critical Oracle requirements, and delivers zero data loss and highest uptime potential.
| Unplanned Outage | RTO/RPO Service Level Objectives1 |
|---|---|
| Recoverable node or instance failure | Zero or single digit seconds2, 3 |
| Disasters: corruptions and site failures | Zero3 |
| Planned Maintenance | |
| Software/hardware updates | Zero2 |
| Major database upgrade | Zero3 |
1 RPO is zero unless explicitly specified
2 To achieve zero downtime or lowest impact for online processing, apply MAA application checklist best practices. For long running transactions such as batch operations, it's best to defer outside the planned maintenance window.
3 Application failover is custom or with Global Data Services
For more information about Oracle capabilities used in this MAA reference architectures, click the graphic above, or click Next.
Learn more about Oracle MAA blueprints for reduced planned and unplanned downtime for Oracle Database on-premises, on Exadata Database Machine, and on Oracle Cloud.