True Yong . inferior h/w , active standby with huge load can cause trouble. Regards, ~ JP ~ ------------------------------------------------- Yong Huang wrote : Prem, You seem to forget the case where the standby could have inferior hardware, for example slower storage, fewer CPUs, etc., and in case of active data guard, expensive queries. According to my test //www.freelists.org/post/oracle-l/Why-extra-standby-redo-log-group,8 it *is* possible that the extra SRL becomes active. But I think it's only best practice, not requirement. Yong Huang -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l