Introduction

In this article I describe the basic mechanics of TCP and DataGuard as well as relevant performance metrics on the database, OS and network sides. The idea is to give DBAs some ammunition in addressing DataGuard performance issues. The most important stage of troubleshooting is the correct identification of the nature of the issue, e.g. being able to tell whether the problem has to do with the network as such, or DataGuard, or Oracle database (primary or standby) or something else. Despite very powerful instrumentation provided by Oracle, it is not an easy task. But even after the network problem has been identified, it doesn’t necessarily stop here for a DBA. You’d think that at that point you’d be able to pass the problem onto a network administrator and wait until it gets resolved, but it doesn’t always work like that. Network issues can be mixed with a range of different ones, but more importantly, network can be a very complex system, so it helps a lot when network people know what exactly to look for. It is equally important for DBAs and SAs to understand the network specialists, because in all but most trivial cases, fixing network issues is an iterative process which requires constant feedback every step of the way. So it really pays for a DBA to speak network administrator’s language so to say.

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