How to setup Oracle Data Guard in AWS

This article helps you set up Oracle Data Guard 12c R1 (12.1.0.2) in Amazon Web Services (AWS) with 2 node configuration (primary and standby) along with Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM). This article assumes that you have basic knowledge how to work with the Amazon cloud https://aws.amazon.com 

1) Setup an account in https://aws.amazon.com (if you don't have one already.)

2) This 2 node Oracle Data Guard configuration can cost about $50 per month (depending on the amount of ASM disk storage you need) if you keep both the servers up and running 24*7.

3) Download the Oracle 12c R1 software from https://edelivery.oracle.com for free. Also, download the Oracle 12c R1 ASM Grid Infrastructure software and then upload them to the Amazon S3 bucket as shown below. Let the S3 bucket be named oracle12cr1.

Also download the Oracle ASM RPMs (two of them) as shown below from the oracle website and upload to the same S3 bucket.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quickstart/latest/oracle-database/welcome.html

Now, launch the AWS Quick Start wizard using the cloud formation template (details in the above link).  Also, you need to specify the right  parameter values to setup the 2 node Oracle Data Guard configuration.

One of the below parameters (InstallBucketName) needs to specify the above Amazon S3 bucket name that has all the Oracle software available already.

Please use the parameters in the below screenshots that will help you in a successful launch of the 2 node Oracle Data Guard configuration in AWS.

Oracle 19c database upgrade

Oracle Corporation released database version 19c in 2019. 19c is considered a long term release from Oracle Corporation and its extended support date is till March 2026.

Oracle Corporation does not recommend you to upgrade to 18c if you are already on one of the Oracle 12c database releases. So, if you are on either Oracle 12c R1 or Oracle 12c R2, then the recommended upgrade is to upgrade to Oracle 19c directly.

Also, another point to note is that 19c is practically considered a patch set on top of the existing Oracle 12c database versions. Oracle 19c is essentially 12.2.0.3 (12c R2 patchset 2). DBA University's Oracle DBA Training is based on 12c R2. So, essentially we cover both 18c and 19c topics in our training

Oracle Corporation is now naming their database release numbers based on the calendar year similar to Microsoft SQL Server.

To give a background, Oracle 12c R1 was released in 2013, Oracle 12c R2 base release 12.2.0.1 in 2017, Oracle 18c which 12.2.0.2 in 2018 and Oracle 19c which is 12.2.0.3 in 2019.