About Configuring Oracle Data Guard for Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure

In the event of a disaster, your Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure primary database could become unavailable. A standby database is a copy of the production database that becomes available in the event of a production database outage. Configuring Oracle Data Guard for your primary database automatically creates a standby database. For the highest availability, we recommend configuring primary and standby databases in different OCI regions. Configuring the primary and standby databases in the same OCI region is also supported.

Oracle Data Guard ensures high availability, data protection, and disaster recovery for enterprise data in an Oracle Database. Oracle Data Guard provides a comprehensive set of services that create, maintain, manage, and monitor one or more standby databases to enable production Oracle databases to survive disasters and data corruptions. Oracle Data Guard maintains these standby databases as copies of the primary production database. If the primary database becomes unavailable because of a planned or an unplanned outage, Oracle Data Guard can switch any standby database to primary, minimizing the downtime associated with the outage.

This playbook describes how to configure Oracle Data Guard for Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure using the OCI console.

Architecture

This architecture shows two Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure databases located in different regions, with Oracle Data Guard configured between the databases to keep them both in sync.

The following diagram illustrates this architecture.

Description of the illustration exadata-dedicated-cross-region-dataguard.png

exadata-dedicated-cross-region-dataguard.zip

Alternatively, your Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure databases can be located within the same region.

The following diagram illustrates this architecture.

Description of the illustration exadata-dedicated-region-dataguard.png

exadata-dedicated-region-dataguard.zip

When configuring Oracle Data Guard, we recommend configuring your Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure primary and standby databases accordingly to ensure maximum availability:

• Maximum availability: Primary and standby databases in different OCI regions.
• Higher availability: Primary and standby databases in the same region, but different availability domains.
• High availability: Primary and standby databases in the same region and availability domain.

Before You Begin

Before you begin, check the versions of major software components used in this setup and review the product documentation for later reference.

Review Software Requirements

• Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure
• Exaimage 22.1.30 or newer (source database)
• Exaimage 24.1.8 or newer (target database)
• Oracle Database 19.25 or newer

Review Documentation

• "Remote VCN Peering using a Legacy DRG" in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation
• "Using the Console to Enable Data Guard on an Exadata Cloud Infrastructure System" in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation
• "Creating a new Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure database with Customer Managed Keys" in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation
• "Switching an Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure Database from Oracle Managed Keys to Customer Managed Keys" in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation
• "Setting Up Replication for OCI Vault" in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure documentation

Considerations for Configuration

Before you begin to configure Oracle Data Guard, review these assumptions and considerations.

• The Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure primary and standby databases must be managed in the same OCI tenancy.
• The standby database is a physical standby.
• A primary database supports up to a maximum of six standby databases using the new Data Guard Group model (19c and later). If you have an existing standby database using the Data Guard Association model, you can change your configuration to a Data Guard Group. This model switch only changes the OCI tooling metadata, and does not affect the databases. See Change an Oracle Data Guard Association to an Oracle Data Guard Group section to learn more.
• The primary and standby databases can run different release updates of the same major database version, particularly when performing maintenance and update operations.
• For databases running versions 11g and 12c, the OCI interface limits the Data Guard configuration to one standby database for each primary database, called a Data Guard Association. If more than one standby is required, then Data Guard configuration must be done manually. Automatic backups cannot be enabled on standby databases, for database versions 11g and 12c.
• Data Guard or Active Data Guard must be enabled to setup a standby database. With Data Guard, the standby database runs in mounted mode, while with Active Data Guard, the standby database runs in Read-Only mode. Data Guard is the default option and is part of Oracle Enterprise Edition license. Configuring Active Data Guard requires proper feature licensing.
• To ensure maximum fault isolation for production workloads, we recommend primary and standby databases are configured on different Exadata Infrastructures. The Data Guard Group model enables in-region and cross-region standbys. Configuring cascade standby databases is not supported.
• DBaaS Tools and Dbcs Agent versions must be identical between primary and standby VM Clusters. Use the dbaascli or rpm utility to verify the DBaaS Tools and Dbcs Agent versions.
• You can use the OCI interface to configure Oracle Data Guard for databases in the same region and across different regions that use Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) with customer-managed keys with OCI Vault. Before configuring Data Guard for a database that uses or will use OCI Vault to store customer-managed keys, see the section Verify Security Policies and Dynamic Groups.

  Note:

  After a database is configured to use customer-managed keys with OCI Vault, it cannot be re-configured to use Oracle-managed keys, regardless of whether Oracle Data Guard is configured or not.

About Required Products and Roles

This solution requires the following products:

• Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure
• Oracle Database

These are the roles needed for each product.

Product Name: Role	Required to...
Oracle Exadata Database Service on Dedicated Infrastructure: database admin	Create Data Guard Association for primary database.
Oracle Database: sys	Create Data Guard Association using primary database sys password.

See Oracle Products, Solutions, and Services to get what you need.