Let’s face it: in the world of databases, downtime is the eight-letter word you never want to hear. Nobody wants to be that person frantically rebooting a server at 3 AM. That’s why Oracle’s Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) has been the trusty superhero cape for protecting databases against all forms of chaos—from a rogue DROP TABLE command (human error, we see you!) to major site disasters.

We are pleased to introduce the next generation of MAA, which expands its foundational structure to five tiers, incorporating new technologies and simpler life cycle best practices to meet the most stringent Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) requirements, providing more architectural choices in Silver and Platinum illustrating why Exadata is required for extreme high availability, ensuring MAA Silver and Gold solutions are available to Oracle cloud and multi-cloud and establishing a brand new Diamond tier highlighting ongoing improvements Oracle AI Database 26ai and GoldenGate 26ai.

Evolving MAA: Five Tiers of Database Nirvana

MAA used to be composed of a four-tier architecture (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum). However, like anything in today’s technical world, even the best solutions can be improved. Thus, we’ve introduced the Diamond Tier to offer the ultimate in resilience and the elusive zero-data-loss guarantee. Think of it as matching your database needs to the perfect RTO/RPO combination with the flexibility and resilience to meet any architecture requirements.

Here’s the scoop on the updated MAA tier lineup:

  • Bronze Tier (Development/Testing): This foundational tier focuses on single-instance databases, providing basic restart capabilities, Flashback Technologies, and traditional RMAN backup/restore procedures. Recovery objectives are typically in the range of minutes to hours.
  • Silver Tier (Production/Departmental): Building on Bronze, this tier adds Database High Availability (HA) through Real Application Clusters (RAC) or a local Data Guard standby database. It incorporates Application Continuity best practices to handle client failover. Instance failures target an RTO of less than 60 seconds.
  • Gold Tier (Business Critical): This level introduces robust disaster recovery (DR) capabilities by using DB replication via Active Data Guard with automatic failover. It provides comprehensive data corruption protection, aiming for a disaster RTO of less than 5 minutes.
  • Platinum Tier (Mission Critical): This tier combines the Gold MAA tier’s capabilities with the optimized infrastructure of Exadata. It offers two advanced options: Active/Active replication using GoldenGate or Active Data Guard with Oracle AI Database 26ai. The goal for disaster recovery RTO is significantly reduced to less than 30 seconds.
  • Diamond Tier (NEW) (Extreme Availability): Representing the apex of resilience, this tier requires Oracle AI Database 26ai, Exadata, RAC, Active Data Guard, and GoldenGate 26ai replicas. This combination targets the highest levels of availability and disaster resilience, aiming for an RTO of 0-10 seconds and Near-Zero Data Loss.

The Technology That Makes It All Possible

How do we achieve this database nirvana?

  • The Exadata Advantage: Exadata is truly unique for resilience and scalability. It actively detects and repairs data corruption and gives you 15X faster recovery for node failure compared to non-Exadata systems. It’s the infrastructure that maximizes availability and makes Platinum MAA tier HA happen.
  • 400% Faster Data Guard: With Oracle AI Database 26ai, Data Guard role transitions are up to 400% faster. That’s right—it’s not just fast; it’s furious. It dramatically shrinks your RTO, proving that AI is great for more than just recommending movies.
  • Multicloud Expansion: The party is expanding! Next-Gen MAA is officially supporting hyperscaler environments, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Achieving MAA Gold level across regions is now official for Oracle Database@Hyperscalers. You can now protect your mission-critical Exadata database service across regions, whether they live in OCI, Azure, Google Cloud, or AWS.

The Five-Tier Next Gen MAA provides more flexibility, resilience, and zero data loss options than ever before. We look forward to helping you “Ascend to the Diamond Tier” and leave database downtime in the past!

Please stay tuned as we roll out more next-gen MAA guidelines, including Diamond MAA. In the meantime, please check out the following for more MAA details: