Creating the physical standby database

In order to create a physical standby database, we first need to install Oracle database binaries to the standby database server and then start a standby database instance. Installing Oracle binaries is out of this book's scope, so it's assumed a standby server is ready with the Oracle database software installed. We will start by covering a standby database instance and copying database files from primary to standby, but first let's look at the initialization parameters that we need to set on standby before starting the instance.

Standby database related initialization parameters

The following are the important Data-Guard-related initialization parameters we set on physical standby databases.

FAL_SERVER

This parameter specifies from where the standby database should request missing archived logs if there is a gap in the logs. It is used only when the database is in the standby role and has a gap in the received archived logs.

A redo gap occurs when the...