kailasTile

 Profile Answers by kailasTile 

• Mar 27th, 2008

 

Failover: Primary fails and standby is made primary.
Switchover: Primary and secondary interchanges the role.

Effectively, in both cases, standby becomes primary, main difference is, when failover happens, it means there is something wrong at primary site, in someway primary is not accessible, either DB has failed or network at primary site. On other hand, switchover is part of routine activity to make sure that DR is functional. Many system (where DR is setup) do switchover every 6 months. Failover is never planned, it happens when major fault occurs at primary site.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Kailas