Oracle Data Guard Configuration + Standby Databases Backup

Introduction

Oracle Data Guard and standby database offer a robust solution for organizations seeking high availability, data protection, and disaster recovery capabilities. By creating a synchronized replica of the primary database, Data Guard ensures uninterrupted access to critical data and minimizes downtime in the face of unforeseen events. 

Druva’s Oracle DTC (Direct To Cloud) provides a seamless backup and restore solution for the Data Guard Configuration. Using this solution, customers can offload their backup and restore processing to standby databases and thereby reduce the load on the primary database server.

How Druva Solved for Major Challenges

Intelligent Database Discovery

Druva’s Oracle DTC  solution intelligently discovers the standby databases present on the server based on their database role. The corresponding primary database associated with the standby database is identified without any manual intervention and a mapping is created between them. For this mapping, the user has to register and assign credentials to both primary and standby databases.

Similarly, in the case of a configuration with multiple standby databases, these mappings are stored on the Druva Cloud, which helps identify the standby database as highlighted by the icon in the above picture.

Efficient Backups

Druva agent intelligently identifies if there are no new logs getting shipped to the standby database. This can happen if there is a disconnection between the primary and standby databases. No log and incremental backup is taken until there are new logs to apply or until a Level 0 backup is requested, which helps in saving bandwidth and the load on the server.

Database Switchover

In case of a disaster when a switchover is performed, the Druva agent continues to take backups of the new primary database (previously standby) and identifies database roles before each backup. This info (database role) is also used to drive backups as some Oracle views are not available within the standby database.

Smart Restores

As mentioned above, after discovering the standby database and the associated primary database, restores can be performed easily on both with the help of backups from the standby database. For performing a restore on the primary database, the Druva agent has to be installed on the server and registered with Oracle DTC.

The agent is smart enough to use the same Control File backup to restore the data on either of the databases.

Key Takeaways

• Enabling backups on the standby database helps in offloading this resource-intensive processing from the primary database.

• In case of data corruption or loss, the database can be easily recovered either on primary or standby databases.

• In case of a switchover, the Druva agent continues to take backups.

• For more information please refer to Backup and Restore Oracle Databases Direct to Cloud.

Next Steps

To learn more about Druva’s technical innovations and how we deliver the best cloud-based backup and restore solution on the market, visit the tech/engineering section of the blog archive.