How to mitigate the performance/protection trade-off in Oracle Data Guard

Introduction
The most know trade-off in Oracle Data Guard is the performance vs. protection.
Oracle Data Guard brings several protection modes, which brings companies the flexibility in choosing the right configuration in order to meet the application SLA policies.

Data Protection Modes
There are 3 protection modes in Oracle Data Guard, which can be summarized in the following table:

Data Protection Modes - Key Considerations

•  Maximum Performance = compromise on protection 
•  Maximum Protection = compromise on performance (usually)
•  Better to use at least 2 standby databases when running maximum protection
•  NET_TIMEOUT parameter of LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_n=30 seconds (default)

Mitigating the performance/protection trade-off in Oracle Data Guard
Oracle 12cR1 introduced a feature which can enable both performance and protection for far standby environments. For example, when the standby database is very far from the primary database, setting a "maximum protection" configuration will likely affect the performance due to the network lag and it may take time to acknowledge commit back to the primary database.
In order to address this challenge, Oracle introduced a feature  called "Far Sync". Far Sync enables having a lightweight instance which resides close to the primary database and is synchronized with the primary database. This light-wight instance has only control files, standby redo logs and archived redo logs. It does not have data files and therefore it cannot be opened for access. The redo entries will be transported from the near "far sync" instance to the "regular" standby database asynchronously.
This feature enables achieving both performance (due to the smaller network latency between primary and far sync instance) while allowing for higher data protection as the far sync instance is always synced with the primary database.

Here is an illustration of this new feature:

Licensing

This feature requires having the Active Data Guard license which is an extra option in Oracle Enterprise Edition. For more information about licensing: https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/18/dblic/Licensing-Information.html#GUID-B6113390-9586-46D7-9008-DCC9EDA45AB4

Useful Links

• Oracle Documentation: https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/SBYDB/create_fs.htm#SBYDB5416
• White Paper: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/availability/farsync-2267608.pdf

RMOUG 2019 - Slide Decks Are Available!

Hi everybody,

I'd like to share with you the slide decks I presented on April 21 in the Rocky Mountain Oracle User Group (RMOUG) conference.
Thanks to everybody who attended my sessions.

Winning Performance Challenges in Oracle Standard Editions

Oracle Diagnostics and Tuning packs offer comprehensive, valuable performance diagnostics and tuning features such as AWR, ADDM, ASH, ASH Analytics, etc. These optional packs can be licensed only on top of the Oracle Enterprise Edition. Without these packs, diagnosing performance issues may become an overly complex task even for advanced DBAs. In this session, we’ll explore how you could use Oracle’s Statspack report and dictionary views to diagnose performance issues even without using any expensive editions and packs. Also, we’ll see how Quest tools can help DBAs diagnose and solve even the most complex performance issues without relying on the Diagnostics and Tuning packs and for all the Oracle Database editions.

https://www.slideshare.net/PiniDibask/winning-performance-challenges-in-oracle-standard-editions-132800192

Oracle Data Guard for Beginners

Oracle Data Guard is one of the most important options in the Oracle Database, as it allows organizations to ensure high availability, data protection and disaster recovery for their Oracle database environments. In this session, we’ll review the Oracle Data Guard solution from A to Z.

https://www.slideshare.net/PiniDibask/oracle-data-guard-for-beginners-134714942