Oracle Utilities - OCP: Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Professional - page 610

Creating a Physical Standby of a CDB
You can create a physical standby of a CDB as you would create a physical standby of a
non-CDB primary database. However, there are some differences you need to know about
when you create and manage a physical standby CDB:

The primary or standby role is defined at the CDB, not in PDBs.

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If you switch over to a standby, the entire CDB is switched over.

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Role change DDL is executed in the CDB$ROOT .

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PDBs do not have their own roles.

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The syntax of SQL statements for a physical standby is generally the same for CDBs
and non-CDBs, with some exceptions:
■ ALTER DATABASE RECOVER MANAGED STANDBY is not allowed in a PDB.
■ ALTER DATABASE SWITCHOVER TO target_db_name impacts the entire CDB.
■ ALTER DATABASE ACTIVATE PHYSICAL STANDBY impacts the entire CDB.
■ ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE [OPEN|CLOSE] is supported on the standby if
CDB$ROOT is open.
■ ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE RECOVER is not supported on the standby, since
standby recovery is at the CDB level.

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Creating a PDB in a Primary Database
In this section we'll discuss creating a PDB in a primary database when using a physical
standby. A PDB on a primary database is created the same way whether or not you're in
an Oracle Data Guard configuration. When you create a PDB as a clone from another PDB
within the same CDB, copy the source PDB data files to the standby database. In an Active
Data Guard environment this is not necessary since the data files are copied automatically
when the PDB is created on the standby database. If you're going to create a PDB from an
XML file, remember to copy the XML file and associated data files to the standby database
server and directory destination.
If the physical standby database has the Active Data Guard option enabled (open read-
only), then copy the set of PDB data files that will be plugged into the primary database to
the standby database locations.

Oracle Active Data Guard is a separately licensed Oracle Database option,
which provides read-only access to an Oracle Data Guard physical standby
database while it remains synchronized with a primary database. This
read-only standby can be used for reporting and ad hoc queries while
not impacting the primary.

Copy the files to the appropriate location at the standby database where they can be
found by the managed standby recovery, before plugging in the PDB at the primary data-
base. If the database files are not ASM, then use the DB_FILE_NAME_CONVERT parameter for