The DBA''s High Availability and Disaster Recovery Survival Guide

For DBAs, this means you need to singlehandedly ensure business continuity is maintained at all times, including scenarios when disaster strikes. You’re taking on the herculean task of maintaining consistent uptime for databases that support data centers, customer portals, web ordering systems and more … even when no one notices. These bottom-line impacts catch the attention of business and finance leaders, who rely on their DBA superheroes to swoop in and save the day. And your work has bottom-line results. Gartner analyst Andrew Lerner estimates the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute. While this number varies based on a variety of factors, industries and customer demands, Lerner estimates downtime costs can range from $140,000 to $540,000 per hour. An online shopping business may be more seriously affected by IT downtime than a B2B accounting firm, but in either case, the costs are significant. These bottom-line impacts catch the attention of business and finance leaders, who rely on their DBA superheroes to swoop in and save the day. 3 DBA: THE DEFENDER OF BUSINESS CONTINUITY Since databases are critical to business operations, DBAs have great responsibility in keeping their organization up and running. For modern, IT-dependent businesses, this means ensuring high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR). HIGH AVAILABILITY To maintain a consistent, predetermined degree of operational performance for an extended period of time, all aspects of the system, including critical elements such as the database, must be successfully operating so customers, employees and partners can conduct business as usual without downtime or delays. HA demands are different for each industry and company. A system that supports an accounting firm might require availability Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. On the other hand, a system that supports first responder dispatch requires 24/7 availability. A major airline’s temporary technology interruption caused the cancellation of flights for 75,000 passengers, costing some $68 million in reimbursement costs, reputational damage and a stock valuation drop of 2.8 percent. Consistent operational performance can be affected by many factors. One common cause of poor performance is analytical reporting. Business users constantly run reports to gain insights that drive new competitive advantages, expand efficiencies and inform innovative product offerings. These reports can cause significant strain on databases, slowing systems for all other users. DBAs can save the day once again by offloading reporting to improve active database performance. 4

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