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Amazon RDS failover for Oracle Data Guard now fully automated with ARC Region switch!

AWS What's New ★★★★ View Markdown
#aws#infrastructure#devops

Hey everyone, it's me! Today's update is about database disaster recovery — unglamorous, but seriously important!

AWS What's New aws.amazon.com

What was announced?

AWS What's New announced a new Amazon RDS Switchover Read Replica execution block for Amazon Application Recovery Controller (ARC) Region switch. ARC Region switch helps you orchestrate failover for multi-Region applications so you can achieve a bounded recovery time when a Region is impaired. This new execution block automates recovery orchestration specifically for Amazon RDS databases running Oracle Data Guard.

The story so far

Until now, recovering an Amazon RDS database running Oracle Data Guard during a Regional failover meant performing manual steps — reversing the roles of the primary database and its read replica, or promoting a read replica to primary. With more manual steps involved, how fast and accurately you could respond in an emergency came down to the operator's skill.

What changes

With the RDS Switchover Read Replica execution block, Region switch automates that role transition or promotion for you. The same execution block handles two scenarios: a zero-data-loss role swap between primary and read replica during a planned failover, and promoting the read replica to primary during an unplanned failover where recovery speed matters most. It also has native cross-account support, so you can orchestrate recovery for RDS instances hosted in a different account from your Region switch plan — enabling centralized recovery management across your organization.

Wrap-up

  • ARC Region switch gained a new RDS Switchover Read Replica execution block
  • Previously, failover for RDS running Oracle Data Guard required manual steps
  • Planned switchovers get zero data loss; unplanned failovers get fast promotion
  • Cross-account support lets you centrally manage recovery across your organization

If you run Oracle Data Guard on multi-Region RDS, this should make your disaster recovery operations a lot smoother!

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