5 ways to improve dba efficiency

ways to improve DBA efficiency5

virtuAlizAtion intelligent interAction

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Contents

2Planning ahead Ask yourself these three questions to make sure you’re planning for the long haul.

AutomationAutonomic features enable a database to take care of basic admin tasks, freeing up DBAs for more creative endeavors.

Availability and reliability Take these five pieces of advice to heart to design a high-availability solution that meets your company’s needs.

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VirtualizationVirtualized databases enable consolidation, a single point of management and scalability—plus productivity gains. 4

Intelligent interaction Embedding database tasks into applications is a key part of being proactive about maintenance.


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Intro

We all know that life as a database administrator (DBA) isn’t easy. Applications, services

and processes are proliferating, but there are never enough experienced staff on

hand to make sure these key business tools keep humming along in tip-top shape.

According to a January 2008 survey of Canadian IT workers conducted by The Strategic Counsel,

many DBAs already devote up to 80 percent of their time to routine systems maintenance.1 That

leaves only one day out of every five available to address the more complex strategic issues facing

the business.

How can DBAs shift the balance of hours back in their favor? In this e-book, we’ll unveil five

tips that can help DBAs build new levels of efficiency and productivity into the data center. The

end result: less overtime (and happier DBAs), lower IT costs and a smart approach to proactive

information management.

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efficiency tip #1: Plan aheadThese days, DBAs touch every point of the enterprise, with duties that include database

performance analysis, corrective action, proactive tuning, establishing and maintaining security

policies, backup and recovery. By planning for the long haul with other business stakeholders,

DBAs can achieve proactive, efficient data management and minimize risk. Start by taking a look

at these questions:

Which infrastructure makes the most sense: centralized or distributed?

A central server infrastructure can reduce the need for technical resources at each location and help

lower data center energy costs. However, lower-cost systems located exactly where they are needed

around the world may reduce overall hardware costs, and can be leveraged for failover and disaster

recovery. Giving business stakeholders guided choices to evaluate what is most important to them

can help you decide what’s right for your organization.

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Plan AheadPlanning ahead1

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How can I minimize the impact of business growth on application and

database performance?

Consider server configurations and plan for scalability to keep applications responsive for

end users—and prevent a crisis situation for DBAs. Taking advantage of predefined standard

configurations in a grid environment can offer instant global scalability and support virtualization

to maximize resources and reduce costs. Remember that backup servers can be put to

work as additional production resources for workload balancing when the need arises.

Are strong information management and security policies in place?

Nearly every business depends on real-time information. Solid information management policies

can go a long way in helping DBAs get the right information to the right people or processes at

the right time—without requiring extra hours to work out the kinks. To protect the company’s

information assets and achieve regulatory compliance, build a data security policy that can

be implemented and maintained efficiently (and automatically, if possible). Plan ahead for role

definition, data access levels, end-to-end encryption requirements and auditing needs.

Plan AheadPlanning ahead1

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efficiency tip #2: Automate common tasksEvery DBA can use a hand now and then—especially when it comes to taking care of the day-to-

day maintenance tasks that so often create data center zombies. Autonomic features support an

intelligent database that can help take care of its own needs, drastically reducing administrative

costs and saving valuable time. Such systems can monitor themselves to automatically recover

from disruptions, adjust for new components, defend against external threats and tune workloads

for maximum efficiency—without requiring constant DBA attention.

DBAs can also help minimize errors and cut costs by prescheduling and automating regular

tasks like statistics profiling and collection, backup, data defragmentation and re-clustering. Plus,

automatic status monitoring can preempt manual reporting on memory, users, indexes and more—

so DBAs spend less time on repetitive drudgery.

“It’s hard to believe, but we only have three DBAs supporting over 100 instances of DB2. We didn’t even consider Oracle for this application because the administrative costs would have been prohibitive.”

– Phil Kilgore, Director of Technical Services, Lithonia Lighting

Automation2

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Of course, every business is different. DBAs can establish policies that specify how, when and

where automatic maintenance is done to maximize efficiency and minimize performance impact

on production applications. Standard scripts and stored procedures can be triggered when

thresholds hit or exceed specific values, conditions or dates—for example, timing out an idle

user after a certain number of minutes.

Writing a single script can pay huge dividends as well. By automating actions that need to be

completed across all databases, such as creating a new table or implementing new security roles,

DBAs can manage thousands of remote servers as if they were a single fleet.



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Virtualization 3efficiency tip #3: increase productivity exponentially with virtualizationMost businesses are aware of the benefits of virtualization by now: consolidation, data center

footprint reduction, increased compute density, lower power and cooling costs and improved

redundancy. But applying virtualization to databases can radically boost DBA productivity while

delivering scalable throughput to smooth performance during peak workloads.

Today’s virtualized databases can dynamically react to changes in underlying system resources,

such as CPU and RAM, to deliver near-native database performance with minimal overhead. And

by running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, throughput can be scaled to match

fluctuating demand.

From a single management console, DBAs can use virtual images to easily deploy thousands of

database servers to remote locations. The virtual database infrastructure can then be managed as

a fleet via scalable remote administration practices. The result? Exponential productivity gains and

dramatically reduced management costs.

“With Informix Dynamic Server, we can run our operation with just one part-time DBA. If we had chosen Oracle, we estimate that we would need two full-time DBAs. The whole experience with IDS is fabulous.”

– Jeff Edelstein, Vice President, Information Technology, Lazare Kaplan International Inc.

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efficiency tip #4: Design intelligent interaction into databases and applicationsLet’s face it: being proactive about administration and maintenance is something we all strive for.

But when every day brings another “fix it ASAP” message or high-priority request from senior

executives, proactive administration can unintentionally end up at the bottom of the to-do list.

It’s time to bump proactive administration back up to a top priority—it will take some time now,

but it will pay off in the long run. Embedding database tasks into application solutions enables

DBAs to reduce—and even eliminate—manual administration. Along with saving time and allowing

applications to be housed in locations that may not have an on-site, local DBA, such intelligent

interaction also benefits the business at large by helping to ensure optimal performance

for critical applications.

Intelligentinteraction 4

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Intelligentinteraction 4

By reacting to feedback delivered by the database, an application can perform mundane

management tasks that would usually fall to a DBA, including:

• Storage management: If an application needs more storage to support information

processing, temporary space can be allocated from within the application.

• Memory management: Automatically tune the total amount of memory consumed

by database processes to minimize the performance impact on users.

• Load management: Harness a database that can invisibly manage I/O during

intensive processing.

DBAs can also view status, report errors, send notifications or perform other tasks with mobile

handheld applications that communicate with the database. These features free DBAs from having to

constantly observe their systems—and hopefully gives them back more weekend time.



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Availability reliability5and

efficiency tip #5: increase uptime with smart availability and reliability Most DBAs have a lot riding on their shoulders in the event of a disaster. According to the U.S. Labor

Department, more than 40 percent of all companies that experience a disaster never reopen—and

more than 25 percent of those that do reopen after a disaster will close down for good within

two years.2 Considering the following points when designing high availability and disaster recovery

solutions can help DBAs rest easier:

• Assess the potential cost of downtime. By planning for the worst, you’ll be prepared no

matter what happens.

• Balance business risk versus cost to determine the level of recovery and availability

that’s right for your business. Minutes of downtime can equate to millions in lost revenue

for some, but not every business needs uninterrupted data delivery or instant failover.

• Automate regular database backup procedures and practice failover and recovery

often. Extend recovery responsibilities and training across the team—DBAs may not

always be available when disaster strikes.

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Availability reliability5and

• Simplify and accelerate the process of setting up primary and standby databases

and adding nodes or servers. Choose a database that makes it easy to scale recovery

solutions by spreading workloads across more servers to match business growth.

• Minimize manual processes when recovering databases—DBAs will be busy enough

in the event of a disaster, so automate what you can. By implementing self-healing

databases that can take care of minor issues on their own, you can prevent avoidable

downtime without constant monitoring.

“Unlike most enterprise databases, Informix is so reliable that it can run more or less unattended…This resilience, combined with its ability to deliver high levels of performance even on low-end hardware, means that Informix can be a very cost-effective platform too.”

– David Rayner, Chairman and CEO, Centric Solutions (UK)



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There’s no going back now: DBAs can look forward to a long future of information expansion,

growing storage needs and even more complex data processing. But by incorporating these

five tips into your data architecture, you can build a scalable database practice that will allow your

current staff to continue to increase efficiency and productivity as business needs grow and change.

IBM® DB2® and IBM Informix® Dynamic Server database software can help turn these tips into

best practices for your business. DB2 is an ideal database for the most demanding workloads, easily

scaling to handle high-volume transaction processing. Informix database solutions are designed for

industrial-strength embedded computing, providing high performance, reliability and nearly hands-

free administration to businesses of all sizes. Informix and DB2 can also help to reduce storage

needs by up to 80 percent using automatic Deep Compression capabilities,3 and help maximize

data availability by reducing planned and unplanned downtime.


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14ResourcesFor more information on IBM databases and improving DBA efficiency, please contact your IBM

sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following resources:

IBM DB2 Break Free from High Database Administration Costs•

Proven strategies for uncovering cost savings with IBM DB• 2

ibm.com• /db2/autonomics

DB2 Workload Manager: IBM Redbook•

High Availability and Disaster Recovery Options: IBM Redboo• k

IBM Informix Dynamic Serveribm.com• /informix/embed

IDS Availability Suite Dem• o

Customizing IBM Informix Dynamic Server for Your Environment: IBM Redboo• k

Informix Dynamic Server 11: Extending Availability and Replication: IBM Redboo• k



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http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/lowerdatabasecosts/administration-costs.html

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http://ibm.com/db2/autonomics

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247524.html

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg247363.html?OpenDocument

http://ibm.com/informix/embed

http://www.demos.ibm.com/on_demand_illustrated/Demo/IBM_Demo_IBM_Informix_Dynamic_Server_High_Availability-Sep08.html

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247522.html?Open

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg247488.html?Open

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1 “Survey sheds light on IT skills shortage.” Ottawa Business Journal. February 27, 2008. www.ottawabusinessjournal.com/298363398256407.php2 “Five essential elements of business recovery.” ibm.com/businesscenter/smb/us/en/contenttemplate/!!/gcl_xmlid=1503923 DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows. ibm.com/software/data/db2/9/editions_features_storage.html

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http://ibm.com/software/data/db2/9/editions_features_storage.html

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