Oracle Replication/Redundancy

[MMcCarthy1]

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to the forum and relatively new to the world of Oracle. My company would like to increase our disaster recovery level from cold nightly tape backups to implementing database redundancy. Basically, they want to purchase a new server, install Oracle, and have the data from our old database server replicated or exported/imported in the new server every couple of hours. We're running Oracle v 7.3.4 on the database server and will mostly likely be running the same version on the new server. Has anyone encoutering this scenario before. Any advice or scripts you can send would be helpful. Oh and by the way we're running Win NT 4.

Thanks in advance,
Mike McCarthy, Network Administrator

[TimHall]

Hi.

You really should be looking to upgrade to 8i before you start on any architecture changes. Oracle 7.3 is now 3 versions old and Oracle will soon stop supporting it.

Oracle 7.3 does support replication but I would suggest you may be better off using the Standby Database feature of Oracle8i:

http://www.oracle-base.com/Articles/...byDatabase.asp

This is much simpler and more efficient if you are only using the additional server for disaster recovery.

Using this method you can continually apply archived redo logs to the server making sure it is constantly up to date.

Depending on the size and complexity of you DB you could use Export/Import but it's a pain in the ass compared to standby database.

Good luck.

[nabaig]

Rightly said. EXP/IMP is definitely a pain and for purposes of disaster recovery, a standby database fits in neatly into the scheme of things.

Nizar

[jovery]

Hi,

While I agree with the other comments, you should be aware that due to recent changes in Oracle licensing model the standby server will also have to have the minimum oracle server license purchased for it.

Regards

Jim