ways to improve

DBA efficiency
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Planning ahead
Ask yourself these
three questions to
2 Virtualization
Virtualized databases
enable consolidation,
a single point of
management and

4
Availability and
reliability
Take these five
pieces of advice

3
make sure you’re Automation scalability—plus to heart to design
planning for the productivity gains. a high-availability
Autonomic features
long haul. enable a database solution that

5
Intelligent interaction
to take care of basic meets your
Embedding database
company’s needs.

1
admin tasks, freeing tasks into applications
up DBAs for more is a key part of being
creative endeavors. proactive about
maintenance.

Planning
PLAN AHEAD Automation virtualization
virtualization intelligent
intelligent Availability
Availability Resources
Resources
ahead interaction
interaction and
and reliability
reliability
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W
e 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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Plan Ahead 1
Efficiency tip #1: Plan ahead
4

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

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“It’s hard to Efficiency tip #2: Automate common tasks

believe, but we Every 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
only have three
intelligent database that can help take care of its own needs, drastically reducing administrative
DBAs supporting costs and saving valuable time. Such systems can monitor themselves to automatically recover
over 100 instances from disruptions, adjust for new components, defend against external threats and tune workloads
of DB2. We didn’t for maximum efficiency—without requiring constant DBA attention.
even consider
DBAs can also help minimize errors and cut costs by prescheduling and automating regular
Oracle for this tasks like statistics profiling and collection, backup, data defragmentation and re-clustering. Plus,
application because automatic status monitoring can preempt manual reporting on memory, users, indexes and more—
the administrative so DBAs spend less time on repetitive drudgery.
costs would have
been prohibitive.”
– Phil Kilgore,
Director of Technical Services,
Lithonia Lighting

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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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“With Informix
3
Efficiency tip #3: Increase productivity exponentially with virtualization
8

Dynamic Server, Most businesses are aware of the benefits of virtualization by now: consolidation, data center

we can run our footprint reduction, increased compute density, lower power and cooling costs and improved

operation with just redundancy. But applying virtualization to databases can radically boost DBA productivity while
one part-time DBA. delivering scalable throughput to smooth performance during peak workloads.
If we had chosen Today’s virtualized databases can dynamically react to changes in underlying system resources,
Oracle, we estimate such as CPU and RAM, to deliver near-native database performance with minimal overhead. And
that we would by running multiple virtual machines on a single physical server, throughput can be scaled to match
need two full-time fluctuating demand.
DBAs. The whole
From a single management console, DBAs can use virtual images to easily deploy thousands of
experience with
database servers to remote locations. The virtual database infrastructure can then be managed as
IDS is fabulous.” a fleet via scalable remote administration practices. The result? Exponential productivity gains and
– Jeff Edelstein, dramatically reduced management costs.
Vice President,
Information Technology,
Lazare Kaplan International Inc.

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interaction 4
Efficiency tip #4: Design intelligent interaction into databases and applications
9

Let’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.

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By reacting to feedback delivered by the database, an application can perform mundane
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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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Efficiency tip #5: Increase uptime with smart availability and reliability
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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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• Simplify and accelerate the process of setting up primary and standby databases
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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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For 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 DB2
• ibm.com/db2/autonomics
• DB2 Workload Manager: IBM Redbook
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery Options: IBM Redbook

IBM Informix Dynamic Server

• ibm.com/informix/embed
• IDS Availability Suite Demo
• Customizing IBM Informix Dynamic Server for Your Environment: IBM Redbook
• Informix Dynamic Server 11: Extending Availability and Replication: IBM Redbook

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009

IBM Software Group

Route 100
Somers, NY 10589

Produced in the United States of America

July 2009
All Rights Reserved

1
“Survey sheds light on IT skills shortage.” Ottawa Business Journal. February 27, 2008. www.ottawabusinessjournal.com/298363398256407.php
2
“Five essential elements of business recovery.” ibm.com/businesscenter/smb/us/en/contenttemplate/!!/gcl_xmlid=150392
3
DB2 for Linux, UNIX and Windows. ibm.com/software/data/db2/9/editions_features_storage.html

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