Upgrading Standby™ from v6 to v8

Every now and then, we receive a support ticket from a customer having problems with their standby database which is running on Dbvisit Standby Version 6. Standby version 6 was released on 20 July 2013 and it was de-supported when version 8 was released on 8 November 2016.

Isn’t it interesting that we in IT, are quite hesitant to upgrade anything, especially if something works well and it has been relatively stable for years. Sometimes we tend to leave it alone – following the old saying “Don’t fix something if it’s not broken!!!”.

Unfortunately, this way of thinking leaves us oftentimes running old buggy versions which may be inferior performance and stability wise when compared to the latest release. That being said, it can also be nerve wracking to realize that the version running on our production system is now no longer supported.

Knowing our product well, we strongly recommend to our customers to always upgrade and run the latest version of Standby™. There are many new features and performance improvements available, and after proper internal testing it just makes sense to use the latest version of our product over previous versions.

Although upgrading your existing Standby™ version 6 to version 8 should be relatively straightforward, we can offer an assistance upgrade service if this is required. This process will require a new installation in a new location, as well as recreating the Standby™ Configuration (DDC) File.

There are a few important things to take note of before starting the upgrade:

1. You will not be required to recreate the standby database.
2. To upgrade to Dbvisit Version 8, your Oracle database must be running Oracle 11.2 or above. See the Support Matrix
3. You’ll have to contact our License and Renewals team to request a new Version 8 license key. The old V6 license will not work on V8.
4. You need to make sure that you have sufficient space on both your Primary and Standby servers to install Version 8 in a new separate location.

I will attempt to show you how to upgrade your Standby™ version 6 configuration to Standby™ version 8.

How to videos:

1. Prepare Existing version 6 Configuration

2. Prepare for version 8 Installation
3. Install version 8 in new Installation Base on Primary
4. Install version 8 in new installation Base on Standby
5. Start the v8 Dbvisit Processes on both servers, recreate the DDC on Primary, manually send and apply logs, then check the Log Gap report

Post-installation steps to ensure your environment runs smoothly on version 8:

1. Start the daemon processes to allow Standby™ to run in the background (or enable normal schedules), see Standby™ Scheduling
2. Enable email notification
3. Configure AMM (Archive Log Management Module) as required

For more information on the topic of upgrading Standby™ from V6 to V8, please refer to this article in our Knowledge Base.