Dbvisit Standby 7.0 New Features

The following improvements and new features have been implemented as part of the new Dbvisit Standby 7.0 release scheduled for release in August 2013.

• Dbvnet – Dbvisit Standby’s new Network Layer is one of the exciting new features introduced in this new release.  Dbvnet’s functionality removes the dependency earlier Dbvisit Standby versions had on SSH for providing network communication between the primary and standby nodes.  By making use of Dbvnet no additional SSH software is required to be installed, configured or maintained on Windows.  When using Linux, Dbvisit Standby can now be configured to make use of the new Dbvnet (default option) or if required, SSH can still be configured and used on Unix based systems.  
  Dbvnet is started as a background process and is run independent from the already known GUI (Dbvserver) background processes.  Dbvnet provides the following key features:

• • Secure network communication (128bit or 256bit Encryption)
  • Compression of network traffic between primary and standby nodes
  • Independence of SSH-based client/server network communication

• Improved Web-based user interface (GUI).  In version 6 the Web-based GUI was introduced, and this has now been improved and enhanced in version 7.  The look and feel has been kept the same, but a number of internal improvements have been implemented.  A few key new features include:
  • New dashboard option to provide you with a central reporting page that provides more information about your standby environment
    The Dashboard is available on Linux only, but is planned to cover other operating systems in future.
  • Improved settings page where Dbvserver (GUI) and Dbvnet (Network Layer) configurations can be adjusted
  • The output of the Create Standby Database (CSD) option now shows new improved formatting to allow for more ease of understanding on the progress of the CSD process.
  • The default Run-Interactive screen is now embedded by default with the option to enable previous (pop-out) behavior under the settings

• Improved Create Standby Database (CSD) process.  New improvements in the CSD process include:
  • Improved Automatic Storage Management (ASM) support.
  • Improved output of the CSD process on the Command Line Interface (CLI) as well as the Web-Based user interface (GUI)
  • New and improved pre-flight checks have been implemented to ensure the standby server is configured and ready for the CSD process to continue
  • Improved handling of NL_NUMERIC_CHARACTERS

• New directory structure.  With version 7 a new directory structure is used.  As seen from the diagram below the base (DBVISIT_BASE) directory is “dbvisit” and the recommended default installation path is “/usr/dbvisit” on Linux and “c:\Program Files\dbvisit” when installed on Windows bases systems.

dbvisit
 |-- dbvnet
 | |-- conf
 | | `-- init.d
 | |-- doc
 | |-- log
 | `-- tmp
 |-- dbvserver
 | |-- conf
 | | `-- init.d
 | |-- doc
 | |-- log
 | `-- tmp
 `-- standby
   |-- conf       <- New location of Dbvisit Standby Configuration (DDC) file
   |-- doc
   |-- log
   |-- pid
   |-- tmp
   `-- trace      <- Default location for Trace files

Below the base directory (dbvisit) three directories will be noted; one for each of the key Dbvisit Standby version 7 components:

• • Dbvnet (Dbvisit Network Layer)
  • Dbvserver (Dbvisit Web-Based interface)
  • Standby (Dbvisit Core and Command Line Interface – CLI)

The default log, trace and temporary files generated by Dbvisit Standby will be created in the respective directories under each component, instead of using the default location “/var/tmp” or “c:\Temp” as was the case in previous versions.

• Recover Standby Database to specific SCN or TIMESTAMP.  This new change has been implemented as part of this release to allow the end user to dynamically specify a SCN or TIMESTAMP value to which the standby should be recovered to, and not past this point.
  Example: Batch jobs are run on the primary system during specific time frames.   Following the batch jobs the standby database should be recovered to a specific SCN or TIMESTAMP (specified by the DBA) to ensure the standby does not roll forward past the batch process.  This allows for the standby to be opened read only to allow for reporting at a specific point in time.

• New default naming of archive logs on the standby server.  Archive logs transferred to the standby database server is now renamed to a specific format:

<thread>_<sequence>_<resetlogs_id><STANDBY_ARCHIVELOG_NAME_EXTENSION>

 Where STANDBY_ARCHIVELOG_NAME_EXTENSION defaults to .arc

 Example: 1_45628_ 812975118.arc

• New Dbvisit Standby licensing.  Dbvisit Standby version 7 makes use of a new License module, and so a new license key is required.  License keys from older version will not be accepted.  For customers with current support contracts a new license key can be obtained from Dbvisit without additional cost.  The default evaluation (trial) period for new installations is still 30 days, after which the required license needs to be purchased to continue using the software.

• New Improved Pre- and Post- Processing scripts.  In version 7 the pre- and post- processing scripts have been improved and can now be executed as part of normal operation (send/apply) as well as part of an Activation of a standby database or even as part of a Graceful Switchover process.  A new DDC file parameter: DBV_PRE_POST_PROC is introduced as well as two sample scripts in the DBVISIT_BASE/standby/doc directory called: dbv_pre_post_processing.cmd (for windows) and  dbv_pre_post_processing.sh (for Unix)

• In addition to the above features and improvements, Dbvisit Standby version 7 include all features, changes or fixes implemented in version 6 (until version 6.0.54 – 17 December 2013)