10gR2 dataguard - auto failover, primary affected?

Hi

I was under the impression that with 10gR2 dataguard you can have automatic failover without affecting the primary database. e.g. in 9i the primary would hang until all redo had been comitted on the standby but with 10g 'fast start' failover is based on maximum availability so the primary db is not impacted by standby failures. Is this the case or not? Ive had some conflicting information namely:

"....Fast-Start Failover - Oracle Data Guard 10g Release 2 The Data Guard configuration must be set at Maximum Availability protection
mode using LGWR SYNC AFFIRM as the redo transport mode. This means that redo generated on the primary is synchronously shipped and written to disk on the
standby server. The primary database does not acknowledge the commit to the
database client until it receives an acknowledgement that the redo has been written
to disk on both primary and standby servers. Maximum Availability insulates the
primary database from the impact of network or standby server failures (such
failures are automatically detected and the primary database continues processing).
However, due to the synchronous nature of redo shipping, there is potential for
the performance of the primary database to be impacted by network resources and
disk writes on the standby database. For this reason it is very important to follow
Oracle best practices for network transport and insure that networks have suitable
bandwith and latency to support synchronous redo shipping...."

Now im completely confused! :( What does this mean?

Many thanks.
Thiko! Received on Mon May 15 2006 - 10:35:30 CDT