Hi @arebbeadle ,

My first question is why do you wish to replicate to Test and Development environments automatically?

Are you trying to have a standby database in case your primary database goes down?

It can be done using Oracle replication tools such as Oracle Data Guard,  Oracle Active Data Guard, Oracle Golden Gate or even an Oracle RAC environment.  I’m not sure what licensing you’d have to deal with we do not use replication.   Replication Done Right

We have our primary database configured with archivelog enabled which among other things allows us to use the Oracle RMAN tool to perform backups of the database while its active and running without interruption to users.   We then use the RMAN tool to actually restore those backups to our Test and Development databases periodically.   You could do it nightly if you desired but we didn’t need the data refreshed in the Test and Development environments that frequently. 

We also send the RMAN backups to an offsite storage in case we ever need to restore.  We keep 5 days of backups at the offsite location.  

Regards,

William Klotz

We are using Oracle Enterprise 19c. I think our main concern is in two areas offsite backup and a reporting server which is updated at least once a day.  I agree our TEST and DEV servers don’t need updated as frequently, we currently use RMAN for these. We basically run 20 hours a day 6 days per week. We do full backups on Sunday and incrementals nightly. Database is about 1.05TB. So I guess I am looking for ways to keep a second database server up todate for reporting purposes?

Thank you,

Hi @arebbeadle ,

Oracle Active Data Guard 19c would provide you with replication to a secondary database which also can be utilize in case of an emergency and be used for reporting purposes.  The secondary database could be in-house or at a remote location.   Basically Oracle Active Data Guard is creating an active standby database.   Here’s a short paragraph from Oracle documentation on Data Guard.

Here’s the link to Oracle White Paper on Data Guard 19c.  

Oracle Active Data Guard

A Data Guard configuration includes a production database referred to as the primary database, and up to 30 directly connected replicas referred to as standby databases. Primary and standby databases connect over TCP/IP using Oracle Net Services. There are no restrictions on where the databases are physically located provided they can communicate with each other. A standby database is created from a backup of the primary database without requiring any downtime of the Production application or database. Once a standby database has been created and configured, Data Guard automatically synchronizes the primary database and the standby database by transmitting the primary database redo - the change vector information used by every Oracle Database to protect transactions – as it is generated at the Primary database and applying it to the standby database.

I would recommend talking with your Oracle DBA or an Oracle DBA before using any replication software because you will need to know how to manage it and what to do if something goes wrong as it always does with software and hardware.

Regards,

William Klotz