Standby DB & Veritas Cluster Server/Replicator

Dear List,
I need to implement the standby database for the Txn. Proc. Prod. system. I have a few doubts. If the failure/disaster happens to prod DB, and can't open the DB, then How to transfer the contents of online logs to standby database? My logs would switch once every hour, and so, I would lose atleast one hour worth of data if I need to activate the standby database. Is there any solution for this?

My second question would be: Temporary network failures are quite common here. We use Veritas Netbackup to backup using RMAN. Archived logs would be deleted after the backup as the archived logs quickly fill up the diskspace. How to keep atleast one copy of the archived logs on a seperate bigger disk permanently, atleast one week without being deleted by RMAN backup script. I tried defining LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_3 as optional location in init.ora. But these files are also being deleted by RMAN backup script along with Mandatory archived logs. We would like RMAN backup script to delete the Archived logs from Mandatory location after the backups are done, but at the same time retain the Optional location archived logs. Is there any way to do this? Restoring from tape would be time consuming and so looking for a solution to retain one copy of the Archived logs on disk.

My third question would be: Is anyone using Veritas Volume Replicator or Veritas Cluster Server or similar product to recover the DB until the last transaction without production DB downtime, in case of failover/disaster? Iam thinking of this product, but not sure this would solve the Automatic  Recovery problem until last transaction with no prod. down time.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
-- Janardhana Babu Received on Mon Jul 09 2001 - 16:19:59 CDT