Graceful switchover in standard edition

I have implemented a lot of standby databases in Oracle Standard Edition version. Until now anyone of our customer asked for Graceful switchover, but at least it happen.



I spend a few hours thinking if it is possible and when a draft of solution came into my mind I have made a research on Oracle Metalink and I have found article dated 1999 about Graceful Switchover in Oracle 8 and 8i – it is interesting because it was before DataGuard and this functionality had been establish (Metalink Doc ID: 76450.1 Graceful Switchover and Switchback of Oracle Standby Databases).



Findings and my original idea are very close – to switchover a database it is required to copy an online redo logs and control file. Everything looks straight forward when we have a database file, online redo logs and control files on filesystem. But what in case of database placed on ASM? Is it possible? In ASM there is no possibility to copy redo logs. Yes, it is. This is some kind of workaround and it required a little more work but I was able to perform a switchover between two databases using ASM.



A solution for ASM based databases is using a mirroring feature for online redo logs. A new member of each group has to be placed on filesystem and not on ASM disk group. After that change we are able to perform a graceful switchover using steps described in Oracle document. At the end an additional (temporary) member of each redo group can be deleted.