Oracle GoldenGate Microservices: Auto Start and Auto Restart for Enhanced Reliability

In mission-critical data replication environments, sustained data synchronization is essential, and unplanned downtime must be minimized. Oracle GoldenGate Microservices Architecture provides built-in capabilities to monitor and manage the lifecycle of its core processes, such as Extract and Replicat.

Auto start and auto restart features are designed to automatically reactivate these processes in case of failures or unexpected terminations. This automation reduces the need for manual intervention, accelerates recovery, and improves overall system resilience.

This article examines the underlying mechanisms of auto start and auto restart within Oracle GoldenGate Microservices. It covers key configuration steps, options for process monitoring, and how the architecture ensures continuity by systematically handling process restarts.

What Is Auto Start and Auto Restart?

Auto Start and Auto Restart are features within Oracle GoldenGate that help ensure the replication processes are automatically managed in the event of a failure.

• Auto Start: When enabled, this feature ensures that GoldenGate processes like Extract or Replicat automatically start when the GoldenGate instance or server is rebooted. This is crucial for maintaining continuous replication after system restarts or unexpected shutdowns.
• Auto Restart: If a running GoldenGate process crashes or encounters a failure, the system will automatically attempt to restart it. GoldenGate will retry starting the process multiple times within a predefined Retry Window

How It Works: A Step-by-Step Breakdown

Oracle GoldenGate Administration Service offers various options to set up managed Extract and Replicat processes, providing granular control over their auto start and auto restart behavior. These processes can be managed via profiles, which define their lifecycle. Below are key parameters involved in configuring auto start and auto restart.

Navigate to Managed Process Profiles:

• In the Administration Service navigation pane, click on Managed Process Profiles.
• Click the + sign to create a new profile or select an existing one.

Enter Profile Details:

• Profile Name: Choose a name for the profile. You can select the default profile or create a custom one.
• Description: Provide a brief description of the profile’s purpose.
• Critical to Deployment Health: (Oracle only, for Extract and Replicat process profiles) Enable this option if the profile is critical for the deployment health.

NOTE: It is not recommended to set Critical to Deployment Health when using GoldenGate with the Oracle Grid Infrastructure agent (XAG), because it can prevent XAG from starting GoldenGate when an Extract or Replicat process is not able to start due to an error (for example, unable to connect to the database). This option will also affect all GoldenGate Deployments managed by the same Service Manager. 

Configure Auto Start and Auto Restart Options:

• Auto Start: Enable to automatically start the process after system reboots.
• Startup Delay: Set the time (in seconds) to wait before starting the process.
• Auto Restart: Enable this to allow automatic restart if the process terminates unexpectedly.
• Max Retries: Define the maximum number of retries the system should attempt to restart the process.
• Retry Delay: Set the delay time (in seconds) between retry attempts.
• Retries Window: Define the duration (in minutes or hours) within which retries will be attempted.
• Restart on Failure Only: Enable this to restart the task only if it fails.
• Disable Task After Retries Exhausted: Enable this to stop further retries once the maximum attempts are reached.

Example Configuration for Auto Start and Auto Restart

Here’s a sample configuration that you can use as a guideline for your GoldenGate environment:

How This Configuration Works:

• Auto Start: Both Extract and Replicat processes will automatically start whenever the GoldenGate deployment itself is restarted.
• Auto Restart: If either process fails, GoldenGate will attempt to restart it automatically.
• Retry Cycle: The system will retry up to 5 times, waiting 30 seconds after failure and between each attempt, all within a 30-minute window.
• Disable Task After Retries Exhausted = Enabled: If the process still fails after all retries, GoldenGate will stop trying until you manually restart it. This prevents endless retry loops.
• If Disabled: On the other hand, if you leave this option disabled, GoldenGate will continue retrying every 30 minutes, indefinitely, until the process comes back online.

This balance of settings ensures fast recovery from temporary failures, but also prevents the system from retrying endlessly if there’s a deeper issue that needs manual intervention.

Conclusion: Automating Reliability with GoldenGate

Oracle GoldenGate’s auto start, and auto restart features offer a powerful, automated way to manage Extract and Replicat processes in high-availability environments. By configuring the right parameters like Max Retries, Retry Delay, and Retries Window, you can ensure that your GoldenGate environment remains resilient and always available.

These features significantly reduce the risk of downtime, automate recovery from process failures, and allow administrators to focus on more critical tasks. Whether you are managing mission-critical systems or ensuring real-time data synchronization, GoldenGate’s auto start, and auto restart functionality will help keep your data flowing without interruptions.

By setting up auto start and auto restart correctly, you ensure that your Oracle GoldenGate environment runs with maximum efficiency, automatically recovering from failures, and minimizing downtime.

To learn more about this functionality, you may refer to:

• Manage Auto Start and Auto Restart for Extract and Replicat Processes
• Configure AutoStart of Extract and Replicat Processes