DATA GUARD

Oracle Data Guard is the most effective and comprehensive data availability, data protection and disaster recovery solution for enterprise databases. Oracle Data Guard is the management, monitoring and automation software infrastructure that creates, maintains, and monitors one or more standby databases to protect enterprise data from failures, disasters, errors, and corruptions.

Data Guard maintains these standby databases as synchronized copies of the production database. These standby databases can be located at remote disaster recovery sites thousands of miles away from the production data center, or they may be located in the same city, same campus, or even in the same building. If the production database becomes unavailable because of a planned or an unplanned outage, Data Guard can switch any standby database to the production role, thus minimizing the downtime associated with the outage, and preventing any data loss. A discussion of Data Guard Architecture also exists.

Data Guard 11g builds upon an already unique set of capabilities, and redefines what users can expect from a disaster recovery solution. It can address both High Availability and Disaster Recovery requirements, and is the ideal complement to Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC). Data Guard has the requisite knowledge of the Oracle database to reliably protect a standby database from corruptions that attempt to propagate from a primary database. It is straightforward to implement and manage. It enables all standby databases, both physical and logical, to be used for productive purposes while in standby role. Data Guard delivers:

• Reliability– optimum data protection and availability. You always know the state of your standby database and it can very quickly (in seconds), assume the primary role.
• Lower cost and complexity – Data Guard's mature capabilities and rich management interface are included features of Oracle Enterprise Edition.
• Maximum return on investment – All standby databases can be utilized for production purposes while in standby role. Idle resources are eliminated WITHOUT increased complexity.