It could as long as you do a startup mount. Or, have it scripted somewhere. Someone else may be able to help you regarding what the broker is capable of. I have not used it yet. Planning to with 11g upgrade. Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 16:38:24 +0000 To: karlarao@xxxxxxxxx; mark.bobak@xxxxxxxxxxxx; martinfbrown@xxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: RAC dataguard - what happens when recovering instance goes down ? From: premj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx CC: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Thanks Karl , Mark , Martin ... for your replies. By any chance , can the surviving standby instance take over the job of recovering instance (when the recovering standby instance fails) ? I did not come across such possibility anywhere on internet ... Regards, Prem _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes with you. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Mobile1_052009