For today’s fast-paced, turn-on-a-dime digital enterprises, with demands for 24-by-7 uptime, no activity is more vital than keeping database systems up and running. Today, database availability is no longer just a critical IT issue; it is a critical business issue.
To be prepared in the event of system failures, infrastructure owners and DBAs have developed strategies to increase resiliency and assure availability of data.
But the truth is that no matter how much planning is done, unanticipated downtime can still happen for a variety of reasons. Despite the array of technology that exists to deliver data on a continuous basis, even companies with multiple redundancies baked into their systems and networks still face challenges keeping up, according to a survey of 331 data managers and professionals, conducted by Unisphere Research, a division of Information Today, Inc., among data managers and professionals who are members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG).
According to the “2015 IOUG DATA PROTECTION AND AVAILABILITY SURVEY” sponsored by EMC, multiple data centers are now common among most enterprises—and 30% have three or more, with most configured to be on hot standby, and handle multiple database types.
The survey finds that unplanned downtime has had a high cost to businesses in terms of productivity and a customer confidence. On average, the survey finds, businesses forfeit one business day a year to downtime. One in seven also report severe data losses. n Businesses are seeking more uptime from service-level agreements, but IT departments are struggling to provide it. More than three in five data managers are not fully confident they can meet these SLAs in the event of a system disruption. Only 28% report that, at best, they are “sometimes” meeting their agreed-upon SLAs for downtime. One-third of respondents report low levels of satisfaction with their current enterprise data availability strategies. Most report difficulties with funding new efforts. Many are turning to cloud and virtualization.
Fortunately, there are solution providers coming the rescue to meet the growing needs for database backups to ensure continuous data availability.
HERE ARE THE WINNERS OF THE 2015 DBTA READERS' CHOICE AWARDS FOR BEST DATABASE BACKUP SOLUTION:
Winner:
Veritas NetBackup
Finalists:
EMC Data Domain
Oracle Database Backup Logging Recovery Appliance