By Donald K. Burleson
The quality of
your database management often translates
directly into customer satisfaction and your
database may be one of your most important
competitive advantages. Hence, companies go to
great expense to carefully protect their
mission-critical data resources. As database
administrator (Remote DBA) staffing costs rise, many
companies realize that they cannot justify a
full-time database administrator, especially
when senior
Remote DBA salaries approach $120k year.
In today’s
connected world, it can be fiscally prudent to
hire Remote DBA specialists. But more important
is the potential for loss of institutional
knowledge. The average attrition of a database
administrator is less than 5 years, and using a
Remote DBA provider ensure continuity of
coverage and no loss of database support.
Choosing your Remote DBA vendor
It’s very easy to
be taken-in by flashy advertising and hyperbole
for Remote DBA services on the Internet,
especially when companies that hire “plants” to
seed message boards and chat rooms with phony
praise and recommendations. Many of the highly
marketed Remote DBA offerings are nothing more
than hopeful beginners with a web site, and it’s
very difficult to find a Remote DBA vendor with
a proven track record. Also, a good Remote DBA
vendor will perform a database healthy check,
identifying all database vulnerabilities and
deficiencies before starting remote support. A
good provider will also publish their monthly
rates, and if you have to ask, you can’t afford
them. As an IT manager, your due diligence is
critical when choosing your vendor and support
package:
-
Check
Credentials
– I’ve seen many Remote DBA websites that
look respectable on their web site, but a
close examination reveals lies and
deception. A respected Remote DBA provider
will have full disclosure, publishing the
names, resumes, and books published by their
support staff. You should also check the
vendor’s record in the Better Business
Bureau and check their Dunn & Bradstreet
records to see how long they have been in
business. Sub-standard companies avoid the
BBB and D&B.
-
Avoid foreign
Remote DBA providers
– It’s critical to choose a Remote DBA
provider within your home country or a
country that enjoys strict data privacy
laws. Laws vary widely between countries,
and you must have the full protection of
your countries copyright and data privacy
statutes. I’ve seen firsthand how choosing
a bargain Remote DBA provider has lead to
widespread data theft, leaving the customer
with little or no legal recourse. Many
Oracle shops choose their Remote DBA
provider within the USA because of our
strict data protection statutes.
Creating your Remote DBA
service portfolio
Once you have made
the decision to go with Remote DBA services,
it’s time to choose your services. Many Remote DBA vendors offer a basic support package which
includes all of the basic services including
monitoring, support and supplemental support.
Remember, Remote DBA services are selling you their monitoring
software and human resources and you should take
special care to evaluate the quality of their
software and the quality of your Remote DBA
staff. Let’s take a closer look at these
standard Remote DBA services.
Standard Remote DBA Monitoring
Your Remote DBA
vendor should possess a full suite of monitoring
software with guaranteed alert mechanisms to
ensure maximum availability. Your support
should also include guaranteed response time to
requests for service and guaranteed response
time for production outages. Your provider
should also guarantee that all of your support
is from vendor-certified database
administrators. Oracle has Oracle Certified
professionals (OCP) and Microsoft has Microsoft
Certified Remote DBA (McRemote DBA) credentials. Your basic
Remote DBA support services should include these
automated services:
-
Predictive
analytics
– All good Remote DBA providers offer
proactive management software that monitors
your database and alerts you when you exceed
predefined thresholds. This is especially
important for monitoring external components
such as disk space and network response
time.
-
Scaling alert
mechanisms
– Your emote Remote DBA vendor should have
sophisticated exception reporting that
notifies you whenever a database event has
occurred. These should include e-mail
alerts for non-critical issues to telephone
and pager alerts for issues that effect
end-user access.
-
Proactive
management scripts
- Many of the Remote DBA vendors have
invested decades of work in developing
proactive database monitoring tool that will
detect issues before the database
experiences a problem. My company
monitors hundreds of database metrics,
with very sophisticated alert mechanisms.
Ask for customer references and ask specific
questions about the proactive mechanisms
that they use to maintain high availability.
Optional Remote DBA Support
In addition to
fast response to problems, your Remote DBA
support package should include a smorgasbord of
optional Remote DBA support services for maintaining
your environment and software.
-
One-time
reorganizations
– Many companies have one-time database
reorganization requirements, usually to
eliminate fragmentation and to cluster
related items together to improve
throughput. All databases have mechanisms
to prevent ongoing maintenance once the data
has been optimized for the application.
-
Software
Updates
– Many companies have different philosophies
about database upgrades, falling into the “If
it’s not broken, don’t fix it” and
the “I have a duty to apply all
software patches” groups. If your
database is stable and secure, negotiate
with your vendor for upgrades on an ad-hoc
basis. You standard package all database
software upgrades and the application of
Critical Patch Updates (CPU).
-
OS Support
– All good Remote DBA vendors offer support
for the operating system software, including
Linux, HP-UX, Solaris and Windows.
-
Application
Support
– If you run a vendor application such as
SAP, Peoplesoft or Oracle eBusiness suite,
you should be able to contract for
specialists to support your application,
both at the software and end-user levels.
