I posted this last week with no response. :-(
anyway I need some advice. We are currently on 8.1.7 in a W2k enviroment. Db is about 80g and will be around 250 by 2006. Our database and user base has grown and is now at the point that downtime is a big problem. Even being down 3-4 hrs for a cold backup is unacceptable. With our previous lemon server we lost the db due to hardware problems 3 times in less then a year. Im presently looking at all possible options for a 24/7 system but it seems like a lot of overhead. Honestly I don't see anyway to have a 100% uptime environment maybe 95%.
Here are my thoughts so far.
The only server based hardware failover solution seems to be clustering. Not an option since we already have new non identical servers.

The only way to reboot without taking down the db is if you are clustered. I guess I'm down to 93% uptime already. I can improve that by getting off Windows. Anyway...

To eliminate DB failure you need a standby db. This is possible but how can you seamlessly switch from a production to a standby. Logicly is seems as if you would have to move all connections to the db first then flush the redo logs. Then bring the standby into production mode. If it was possible I would like to swap db's every few days to backup one of them them.
I'm currently reading up on datagard. Any info is appreciated.
Thanks
Sean







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