ITS Oracle Database Redundancy

Wesleyan ITS safeguards production Oracle databases by using hot standby technology.

An Oracle hot standby database is an identical copy of a production database, located on another server.  The hot standby database copy receives updates from the production database in near real-time, applying the same transactions (in the same order) as they occurred on the production database.

When a catastrophic failure occurs on the server which the production database resides (i.e., massive disk failure, motherboard failure), and this failure is not correctable in a few hours, the hot standby database will be put into service.  The hot standby database will become the production database.  In this way the most important databases are always available to the Wesleyan community, even in cases of severe failure.

There are currently six production hot standby databases:

• PeopleSoft HRMS/CS database

• Millennium fund raising database

• CURL (Autosys, media database, electronic portfolio, etc.) database

• Blackboard Learning Objects database

• Blackboard Community System database

• Xythos