Configuring HP Serviceguard Toolkit for Oracle Data Guard

Introduction

This document describes how the HP Serviceguard Toolkit for Oracle Data Guard assists in easy

integration of Oracle Data Guard (ODG) with HP Serviceguard. ODG is the host-based data-

replication software for Oracle Database. It provides management, monitoring, and automation

features to create and maintain one or more standby databases to protect data from failures,

disasters, human error, and data corruptions. To provide High Availability (HA) so that data

replication continues in the face of failures, ODG can be deployed in a Serviceguard cluster.

Terms and definitions

Term Definition

ASM Automatic Storage Management

ECMT Enterprise Cluster Master Toolkit

EDC Extended Distance Cluster

LVM Logical Volume Manager

MNP Multi-node Package

ODG Oracle Data Guard

RAC Real Application Clusters

Oracle Data Guard overview

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

corruption. Data Guard maintains these standby databases as transactionally consistent copies of the

production database. If the production database is unavailable in case of a planned or unplanned

outage, then Data Guard can switch any standby database to take over in the production role, thus

reducing the downtime associated with the outage. Data Guard can be used with traditional backup,

restoration, and cluster techniques to provide a high level of data protection and data availability. A

Data Guard configuration consists of one production database, known as the primary database, and

up to nine standby databases.

Physical and logical standby databases

A standby database can be either a physical standby database or a logical standby database.

A physical standby database provides a physically identical copy of the primary database, with

on-disk database structures that are identical to the primary database on a block-for-block basis. The

database schema, including indexes, is the same. A physical standby database is kept synchronized

with the primary database, through Redo Apply, which recovers the redo data received from the

primary database and applies the redo to the physical standby database.

A logical standby database contains the same logical information as the production database,

although the physical organization and structure of the data can be different. The logical standby

database is kept synchronized with the primary database through SQL Apply, which transforms the

data in the redo data received from the primary database into SQL statements and then executes the

SQL statements on the standby database. A logical standby database can be used for other business

purposes in addition to disaster recovery requirements. The users can access a logical standby

database for queries and reporting purposes at any time.