I don't follow--maybe you read into what I wrote. When I said "...can tolerate a failure of a single component without affecting application availability..." I meant *any* component, including storage. Not just a disk, an array too. Oh yeah, I love lots of hardware :). I once heard someone say that you either way money or availability, but you don't get to have both. Please correct me if I misinterpreted your comment. Dan ----- Original Message ---- From: Jared Still <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx> To: dannorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: richard.goulet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; mssql_2002@xxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 4:58:46 PM Subject: Re: RAC Vs Standby Database between Primary and Secondary Data Centers On Jan 21, 2008 9:53 AM, Dan Norris <dannorris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Dick, Here's where I think we need to make clear what defines "high availability" versus what becomes "disaster recovery". Many sites want/need both. In my dictionary, I define high availability as a system that can tolerate a failure of a single component without affecting the application availability. The problem I have with that definition is the the HW duplicated is not the HW most prone to failure - the storage. -- Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist