Now more than ever, companies are facing staffing and skills challenges. DBAs and managers are under pressure to deliver high-performing and responsive systems that can scale with the business. The role of the DBA remains unchanged, but technology continues to advance. Databases can be on-prem, in the cloud, or a hybrid combination. Databases can be purpose-built, multitenant, converged, or autonomous, and both legacy and cloud-native applications use and store data in databases. Often, databases are not properly managed and are at risk when it comes to business availability, security, or compliance.
During Quest’s Database & Technology Week, Steven Lemme, senior principal product manager, and Sriram Vrinda, product manager, at Oracle, delivered a presentation on how to face these challenges with on-demand database management.
In today’s world, they explained, most enterprises have mixed IT, and most enterprise adopters of public cloud services use multiple providers. Some of the challenges of multi-cloud database management include applications being increasingly spread out, more complex, and microservices-based. In addition, more applications mean more scripts, tool installs, configurations, and screens to view all the databases, as well as greater requirements for time to identify, isolate, and diagnose database issues, while newer DevOps practices add requirements for more observability and management telemetry.
DBAs face the dilemma of current scripts/tools not working for:
- More than a couple of databases
- Supported Oracle Database versions
- Oracle multitenant, Autonomous, and Exadata abilities
- Databases in cloud, hybrid, or multi-cloud environments
- DevOps/development teams’ agility needs
Some of the benefits of using this service include the ability to get information on your databases within minutes of subscribing; having the latest Oracle Database support; the ability to replace siloed third-party tools, reclaim hardware and resources, and save money; the availability of in-depth diagnostic and SQL metric detail; and the fact that having a common source of information enables faster troubleshooting.
OCI Database Management Service
The OCI Database Management Service is Oracle Cloud’s on-demand managed cloud-native service. With this service, users can subscribe and start using it in minutes, with no onsite install, repository, integration, or scripting work required; obtain application diagnostics capabilities for the data tier, so they can solve problems faster; automate database management tasks on-prem and on cloud to reduce risk and accomplish more work; and have modern Oracle Database administration supporting the latest database versions and capabilities. In addition, the service enables users to view a database in one place (on-prem, hybrid, or multi-cloud) with full insight into availability, performance, and infrastructure operations; get insight on issues, availability, and key statistics for troubleshooting and diagnostics; and perform operations on one database or a fleet of them.
The OCI Database Management Service complements Oracle Enterprise Manager. This on-demand managed cloud service caters to those who have not deployed Enterprise Manager or would like an Enterprise Manager Express replacement. Users such as developers don’t need, nor would they use, all the functionality that Enterprise Manager has to offer. Yet, DevOps teams are often called upon to perform database management tasks for Oracle Databases. The OCI Database Management Service can be used to replace or fill in the gaps left by third-party tools that don’t support the latest versions of Oracle Database and multitenant abilities, or that pose a security risk.
Key Use Cases for OCI Database Management Service
Some of the key use cases for OCI Database Management Service include achieving a single management view for Oracle Databases on-prem and in the cloud, obtaining real-time performance diagnostics and administration capabilities, leveraging existing on-prem skills, and managing databases in the cloud with a unified and integrated solution.
With this service, you can manage Oracle Database from practically anywhere. There is one console for monitoring and management. It’s also simple to adopt and use, and it provides fleet-wide administration for greater operational efficiency. It offers unified database diagnostics and tuning for database lifecycle management and quick troubleshooting of issues, optimizes SQL with real-time SQL monitoring, and optimizes database performance.
To learn more about on-demand database management, check out the Database & Technology Week presentation at https://questoraclecommunity.org/learn/recordings-presentations/ on-demand-database-management.