Standby DB questions

I have a couple of questions for people running standby databases:

1. What is a good method to use to delete logs on the standby after they are no longer needed for recovery? Its kind of hard to tell what has been applied without opening the database read only and running a query. I sure there is a better way to do this.
2. What methods do people use for failover? Do people change the machine name and reboot or use tns failover? Or are there better ways of acomplishing this.

Thanks,

John

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