The Oracle Blog

Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Future of Backups for DBAs

DBAs have used vendor solutions for backups for years.

In the Oracle world RMAN has been the primary tool used for Oracle backups.
In the MySQL world replication, InnoDB hot backup have been primary tools used for backups.

However as databases grow into the two terabyte range and larger, the old ways are just not efficient any longer. In the future you will see snapshots and split mirror backups become more prominent in large database enviroments.

Snapshots and split mirror backups offered by logical volume managers and some operating systems allow a backup to be taken in a few seconds. Higher availability requirements and time windows required to perform backups are becoming bigger issues as database servers continue to grow in size.

Labels: Best Practices

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Importance of Peripheral DBA Skills

The DBA Skills Gap

In going to different companies every month I am consistently seeing a DBA skills gap in the peripheral areas of being a DBA. In the old days, a DBA that understood the operating system, networking and the development environment was a pretty complete DBA. Especially since in the old days, DBAs came from the development ranks and could support developers. In today's complex database environments, there is a definite skills gap in DBAs understanding the environments around databases. DBAs don't need to be experts in these areas, but should at least be comfortable in some of the areas surrounding databases:

Operating system.
Basic networking knowledge.
Storage management.
RAID levels.
Striping and mirroring concepts.
Middle-tier fundamentals (Application Servers, connection pooling, caching, connection best practices from Java, .NET, PHP, etc).
J2EE environments (Web Services, WSDL, SOA, BPEL, ...).
XML.

DBAs with peripheral skills in some of these areas are worth their weight in gold. With the complexity of database management it is getting harder and harder for new DBAs to have strong DBA skills and peripheral skills of the environment surrounding the database.

Labels: Oracle DBA

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Reading Whitepapers from Collaborate 09

Complexity of Database Environments

Database vendors are putting in tremendous effort to reduce the complexity of database environments. However in the world of multi-tiered architectures, application servers, web technologies, storage, clustering, virtualization, Grid management, EPM, MDM as well as the constant growth in databases and performance challenges their is going to be complexity. So DBAs are going to need to constantly upgrade their skills to be ready for all the challenges surrounding database environments.

IOUG Collaborate 09 Conference Whitepapers and Podcasts

One of the ways of keeping an Oracle DBA and Developer's skills up is to attend user conferences. The whitepapers and podcasts from the IOUG Collaborate 09 conference are one way to keep up to speed on what the top Oracle user community leaders are saying. I have been reading a number of excellent whitepapers and podcasts. Below are some of the categories of whitepapers from the IOUG conference.

Technology Directions
Connectivity
Governance and Corporate Compliance
Application Express
Service Oriented Architecture
11g Features
Performance Database Tuning
Database Programming
Security
Tools Evaluation
Frameworks
Testing/Quality Assurance
Best Practices
Web Development
Crossover Topics for App Server Administrators
Industry Best Practices
Case Studies
Design/Configuration
Enterprise Integration

As a database professional make sure you are finding ways to keep your skills up. :)

Labels: Collaborate 09

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Are You A DBA That Scales Vertically or Horizontally?

It is always important to make sure you are maintaining your skill set and marketability as an Oracle professional. In a down economy it is even more so for a DBA. So my question to you is , do you try to scale vertically or horizontally? Scaling vertically, is picking a specific area like RAC or BI and trying to maximize your expertise in that one area. If you scale horizontally you are trying to maintain expertise in a number of areas. I have focused on scaling horizontally, so I can manage HA across all tiers of an Oracle infrastructure. This has involved three key areas:

Infrastructure Management: Oracle Enterprise Manager (Grid Control)
Database Server High Availability: Oracle RAC, Data Guard, Streams, Disaster Recovery, Performance and Backup/Recovery
Middle-tier Management: Oracle Fusion Middleware (J2EE, Web Services, BPEL, SOA, XML, Oracle Business Rules)

Maximizing your expertise is very important these days. The traditional DBA that just knows basic administration, performance tuning and backup/recovery is the lowest common denominator and the easiest person to outsource. Here are ten areas you may want to consider for increasing your expertise and marketability as a DBA:

Managing infrastructures with Oracle Enterprise Manager (Grid Control)
High Availability (RAC, Data Guard, Streams)
Virtualization
Oracle Fusion Middleware
Oracle Applications DBA (EBS, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, Siebel, Oracle Fusion, ...)
Oracle EPM
Oracle Essbase and EPM
Oracle Security
Oracle Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
Oracle Application Server and Portal