Creating A Physical Standby With RMAN Active Duplicate In 11.2.0.3
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May 28, 2013
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Other DBAs have written about this topic, but I wanted it to be available on Pythian’s blog. When I searched for how this was done, other sites were either not very clear on the steps they did, assumed that you already knew what you are doing, or went through the steps too quickly.
If this is your first time building a standby, there is some terminology you need to know before going into any of the steps in creating your physical standby. It will help you to better understand your dataguard environment and what is being done, instead of simply copying a number of steps. These are just the definitions in Oracle’s documentation, but they will help you avoid the arduous search.
- LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n .- It controls different aspects of how redo transport services transfer redo data from primary database destination to a standby. This parameter has several attributes that are needed to setup your Dataguard environment, I will only mention the critical ones:
- ASYNC .-This is the default, the redo data generated by a transaction need not have been received at a destination which has this attribute before that transaction can commit. or
- SYNC .-The redo data generated by a transaction must have been received by every enabled destination that has this attribute before that transaction can commit.
- AFFIRM and NOAFFIRM .- Control whether a redo transport destination acknowledges received redo data before or after writing it to the standby redo log. The default is NOAFFIRM.
- DB_UNIQUE_NAME .- Specifies a unique name for the database at this destination. You must specify a name; there is no default value.
- VALID_FOR .-Identifies when redo transport services can transmit redo data to destinations based on the following factors:
- redo_log_type .-whether online redo log files, standby redo log files, or both are currently being archived on the database at this destination
- database_role .-whether the database is currently running in the primary or the standby role
- FAL_SERVER .-Specifies the FAL (fetch archive log) server for a standby database. The value is an Oracle Net service name.
- FAL_CLIENT .-Specifies the FAL (fetch archive log) client name that is used by the FAL service, configured through the FAL_SERVER initialization parameter, to refer to the FAL client. The value is an Oracle Net service name, which is assumed to be configured properly on the FAL server system to point to the FAL client (standby database).
- LOG_ARCHIVE_CONFIG .- Enables or disables the sending of redo logs to remote destinations and the receipt of remote redo logs. This parameter has several attributes, the most important for this exercise is below:
- DG_CONFIG .- Specifies a list of up to 30 unique database names (defined with the DB_UNIQUE_NAME initialization parameter) for all of the databases in the Data Guard configuration.
Now that we have the definitions out of the way (which you can find at , we will continue with the setup of our Physical Standby.
For this exercise, I have the following :
- Primary : testgg1 Server : dlabvm13
- Standby : testgg2 Server : dlabvm14
The first thing that we need to do is find where the Redo Logs and Datafiles reside in the Primary and where will they reside in the Standby so that you can set your parameters LOG_FILE_NAME_CONVERT and DB_FILE_NAME_CONVERT properly. Make sure that these directories have the necessary space to hold the Primary database. If you don’t have this space, then do not continue.
Next, assure that you are in archivelog mode, and that force logging is enabled in your primary.
If your database is not in archive log mode, do the following:
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Now that we are running in archive log mode and force logging is set for the primary, make sure that the Listener/ Tns entries are set correctly and that you can tnsping them both from the primary/standby.
For more details on how to set them up, go to .
The result in both the primary and standby servers should be similar to below:
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Then, create and replicate the password file from the primary $ORACLE_HOME/dbs, and rename it to the standby database name. The password file name must match the ORACLE_SID used at the standby site, not the DB_NAME.
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Now that the password file has been created, you can setup the init file for the Primary Database. As you can see at the end, it’s the parameters we explained at the beginning of this entry.
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One of the coolest things about this method is that almost all of the work we will do will be in the Primary database server. The only thing you have to do in the Standby Server is create the locations of my diagnostic files/redo/datafiles/control files, verify the connectivity between the Primary and the Standby and just start the Standby Instance, which is our next step.
The next step is to set the ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME, and ORACLE_BASE for the Standby Instance and open it with minimal options:
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Now let’s get back to the Primary database server, where the next thing to do is add the standby logs. In this case, I created two with the same size as the Online Redo Logs that I have in my Primary.
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Once we have created the Standby Logs in my Primary Database, we will create the following RMAN run commands and the changes to the standby’s spfile in this RMAN block.
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Now that the the RMAN command file has been created, you just need to run this command in the target database, which is the Primary Database , connecting to the Standby as the auxiliary.
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As you can see, that was as easy as pie. Now we can just start the recovery process in the Standby Database. In this case, I used Active Dataguard so that I could show you that it is actually working, but just be aware that this is a Licensable Option.
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Now, I go back to the primary and create a table called test in the schema sender. As you can see above, this table doesn’t exist in the Standby database.
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I go back to the Standby, and we can see that we have the table that we just created.
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There are various ways to see if this is working or not. You can use it in the following query to see what was the last archive received/applied in the Standby Database.
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While in the Primary Database, you can check what is the current sequence and what is the pending sequence to be applied.
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I hope this little guide helps you out when you are trying to build your Physical Standby from an Active Duplicate. As always, test anything that I have said or mentioned before trying it in a production environment.