Fast-Start Failover is supported with Maximum Protection in 12cR2. Also Multiple Observers can now monitor the same Data Guard Configuration simultaneously. I will show both in this article. Starting with a (Multitenant) Primary in Maximum Protection mode with two Standby Databases. It is still not recommended to have the highest protection mode configured with only one standby. So this is my starting point:
All three databases have flashback turned on. I want to have a setup like this in the end:
FSFO with Max Protection and 2 Observers
This is how it’s been configured:
On host uhesse4:
On host uhesse3:
This is now the state of the configuration:
That protects against the failure of any two components in the configuration with automatic failover and zero data loss! For example the first standby may fail and then the primary. We failover to the second standby that becomes the new fast-start failover target:
Above crashed the first standby. This is what the Observers report:
This is the state of the configuration now:
Notice that the Fast-Start Failover indicator (*) now points to cdb1sb2. Now the primary fails:
This is what the Observers report:
After having restarted the two crashed databases, they become automatically reinstated and the configuration then looks like this:
Switching back to make cdb1 primary – this is of course optional:
I think this enhancement is really a big deal!
Tagged: 12c New Features, Data Guard 
