Thanks for the review. I did not realize we had been spammed, again!
Dick Goulet
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: Jeremiah Wilton <jwilton_at_speakeasy.net>
Date: 3/6/2002 11:16 AM
So after the spam posting from RDC, I went and checked the features of
their "Standby Wizard." Here are my findings. Note that I did not
use their product, but only read the manual, so they may not be as bad
as they appear from the manual.
>From their user's manual it appears Standby Wizard:
- Can't perform graceful failover and fail back. They can only
activate, then re-copy the database back to the primary. In other
words, no graceful role reversal, which totally disqualifies this
product for use in planned failovers for system maintenance. It also
means that anyone relying on this product will have unnecessarily
extented periods without a redundant site, and unnecessary use of disk
and network I/O while the database is reinstatiated.
- Can't manage alias IP addresses. All redirection of client
applications must be performed manually.
- Can't instantiate the standby in parallel. Unless I am mistaken,
instantiation is performed in serial, meaning that copying a database
of any significant size will take a very long time.
- Can't notify someone if the standby stops working. I don't find any
references to a proactive notification feature. So if the standby
encounters a severe problem, nobody will know unless they happen to
check and find the standby 5000 logs behind.
It also appears that the Standby Wizard's course of action when a
datafile is added is to require the operator to request an
'incremental rebuild' of the standby database, which stated more
accurately means copying a datafile or datafiles from the primary to
the standby. As many of us know, that is totally unnecessary to copy
a newly created datafile to the standby. All we have to do is wait
for the standby to fail with ORA-01670, then issue:
alter database create datafile '<primary filespec>' as '<standby filespec>';
Their method uses resources unnecessarily and requires operator
intervention, both of which seem senseless.
In short, I would not use this product in any serious,
mission-critical situation.
