{"id":2310,"date":"2026-02-02T15:52:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/?p=2310"},"modified":"2026-02-02T15:53:04","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T13:53:04","slug":"dg26ai-observer-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/dg26ai-observer-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Guard 26ai &#8211; #5: Fast-Start Failover Observer Priority"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"auto\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/dg-26ai-series\/\">This post is part of a blog series.<\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"auto\">Technically, this is a 21c feature, but it&#8217;s worth calling out some of those 21c improvements, because most customers are still running on 19c or earlier. That means when you upgrade to 26ai, you\u2019ll pick up all the 21c goodies too!<\/p>\n<p dir=\"auto\">Here\u2019s one: Fast-Start Failover observer&#8217;s priority. In 19c, you could list preferred observers for each possible primary with the property <a href=\"https:\/\/docs.oracle.com\/en\/database\/oracle\/oracle-database\/26\/dgbkr\/oracle-data-guard-broker-properties.html#GUID-42A6FA62-4EE9-4682-8056-C3672CB226CC\">PreferredObserverHosts<\/a> , but you couldn\u2019t actually assign an observer priority based, for example, to the observer&#8217;s location.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"auto\">21c fixes that. Now, you can give each observer a priority by adding a colon and a number right after the hostname. The lower the number, the higher the priority. This lets you spell out exactly which observers should be chosen first if a promotion is needed.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"auto\">The diagram below shows an example: the external site\u2019s observer is set as the top pick for both databases at the primary and the secondary sites, with each site\u2019s local observer as the backup (which is our recommendation in this case).<\/p>\n<pre class=\"lang:plsql highlight:0 decode:true \">edit database db_site1 set property PreferredObserverHosts='obs_ext:1,obs_site1:2';\r\n\r\nedit database db_site2 set property PreferredObserverHosts='obs_ext:1,obs_site2:2';<\/pre>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2312\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-1024x480.png\" alt=\"two databases, one per site, have the top preferred observer on an external site, and both have a backup observer locally on their respective site.\" width=\"584\" height=\"274\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-1024x480.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-300x141.png 300w, https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-768x360.png 768w, https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-1536x720.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-2048x960.png 2048w, https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dg26ai-observer-priority-1-500x234.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"auto\">You can create that setup now\u2014thanks to observer priorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is part of a blog series. Technically, this is a 21c feature, but it&#8217;s worth calling out some of those 21c improvements, because most customers are still running on 19c or earlier. That means when you upgrade to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/dg26ai-observer-priority\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[375,329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oracle-ai-database-26ai","category-oracle-dg"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2399,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions\/2399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludovicocaldara.net\/dba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}