PRINT FROM SAP HELP PORTAL

Document: Standby Databases - SAP Documentation URL: http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw73ehp1/helpdata/en/45/2e363501e64c2ce10000000a1553f6/content.htm Date created: August 18, 2013

2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice. Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. National product specifications may vary. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies ("SAP Group") for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and other countries. Please see www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx#trademark for additional trademark information and notices.

Note This PDF document contains the selected topic and its subtopics (max. 150) in the selected structure. Subtopics from other structures are not included.

PUBLIC 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Page 1 of 2

Standby Databases
This section describes standby databases in general. The basic concept of a standby database is to set up a copy of the production database on a second hardware system, so greatly improving the overall reliability of the database service. The standby database is used if the production database fails.

Features
With standby database solutions, you need to consider the effects on the SAP application hosts connected to the database, when the database fails and the database host changes. If the two database hosts form a high availability cluster, it might be possible to use a standard switchover solution. For more information about related issues (such as how to configure the database, application hosts inside and outside the cluster and the database reconnect feature), refer to See also at the end of this section. If the two database hosts do not form a cluster the effects on application hosts vary, depending on where they run: All application hosts run external to the two database hosts After failure, all application hosts have to be restarted using a different profile to connect to the standby database. It is sufficient to set the profile parameter SAPDBHOST to point to the new database host. SAP primary application server (PAS) instance (including enqueue and message service) runs on the same host as the production database If the database fails, both database and primary application server (PAS) are restarted on the standby database host. At the very least, SAPDBHOST has to be different in the profile of the PAS. You need to change several parameters in the profiles of all external application hosts and these have to be restarted. If the standby database was set up using asynchronous transfer of transactions (that is, log file shipping), all users have to be made aware after work resumes using the standby database that transactions might be lost. Users also have to be told to check whether the last changes they made are still available. The following applies: If the last transaction of a user is committed to the standby database, all previous transactions for that user are definitely committed as well. If the last transaction for a user is missing, the user has to check back to find the last transaction that was successfully applied to the standby database. All work done after this transaction is lost and has to be repeated manually.

More Information
Switchover Software for High Availability You can find more information at: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/sdn/ora

PUBLIC 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Page 2 of 2