How to adapt and succeed amid cost-cutting measures in database management

THE DBA’S GUIDE TO THE CLOUD, OPEN SOURCE AND DEVOPS

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Gone are the days of the Oracle or SQL Server shop. Just when you’ve mastered one approach to database management and monitoring, busi-ness decides to cut costs by adopting the cloud and open-source data-bases. As if those massive changes weren’t enough, the shift toward a DevOps culture, in which companies can remain competitive by acceler-ating release cycles, is also becoming more prevalent.

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When you’ve worked hard to become a specialist, as an Oracle certified professional or SQL Server MVP, all this change can be disheartening. You’re already dealing with data growth, the difficulty of maintaining high availability 24x7 as well as all the other pres-sures that come with being a modern DBA. So adding unfamiliar database platforms and high-pressure initiatives to your workload only adds risk and stress.

But what if you could easily and confidently embrace the latest database manage-ment trends? Imagine if you could not only understand the implications of impending IT changes, but also arm yourself with pow-erful tools to overcome the new challenges they present. A solid strategy and toolset would put you in a position to keep up with growing demand, maintain your role as a valued IT expert and proactively ensure peak database performance – no matter which database platforms or methodologies you’re expected to support. Change is scary, but the expert insight in this guide will help alleviate your fears and empower you to success-fully navigate new cost-cutting measures affecting DBAs.

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The ever-changing world of database managementThe database administration landscape has seen significant changes in the past decade, and the next 10 years promise to be equally transformative. One of the most significant recent shifts is the increased volume of data. Massive data growth presents new opportunities and challenges, including how to monitor, protect, analyze and use it. How businesses respond and adapt to these opportunities and challenges will help determine their ultimate success or failure. A strong database management strategy, operated by talented database administrators, can help.

Sophisticated database administration helps your business save money, increase efficiency and keep your customers satisfied. Skilled DBAs, along with the right technology, deliver reliable trou-bleshooting, ensure uptime and supply accurate, insightful reporting. Preventing problems on the frontend and being able to quickly address them, keeps operations running smoothly.

Airline companies are a good example of businesses that rely on consistent uptime and reporting. Their customers are seeking important data services on their website 24x7, whether purchasing flights, checking in or checking flight status. Internal downtimes could cause passenger luggage to be lost or routed incorrectly; ticketing snafus could cause customers to go elsewhere. On the other hand, strong data management from airlines enables positive customer service experiences by providing information on customers’ travel and purchasing habits. To succeed in this environment, organizations need to understand how the data environment is changing.

The database administration landscape has seen significant changes in the past decade, and the next 10 years promise to be equally transformative.

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The biggest trends affecting database management The three key trends impacting database management are open source, the cloud and DevOps. Open-source databases and the cloud are providing a wealth of new ways to help your business reduce costs. Meanwhile, the convergence of development and operations pres-ents new opportunities to maximize talent resources.

The three key trends impacting database management are open source, the cloud and DevOps.

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An open mind for open-source databases Gartner predicts that by 2022, “More than 70 percent of new in-house applications will be developed on an open-source data-base management system.” The adoption of open-source databases is increasing, as these systems are proving to be low-cost and reliable, and now feature better management functions and support. That being said, there are pros and cons when comparing open-source databases with the commercial players.

One pro, is that more big-name vendors are jumping into the world of open source, providing peace of mind that there’s a reli-able partner to turn to if an issue crops up. In addition, many open-source vendors now offer services like encryption, similar to those provided by commercial organizations.

The database administration tools open-source vendors provide usually pale in comparison to those of the larger commer-cial vendors, meaning there will be certain tasks DBAs will need to be skilled enough

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to perform. Open-source databases have improved to the point that they can handle some mis-sion-critical applications, such as an airline booking system, but this will not be the case in every scenario. Commercial players typically have the resources to drive innovation at a rate that open-source providers can’t match. But open-source options can be considerably cheaper. Providers do charge for services such as tech support.

Often, a multi-platform approach – in which open source is included – allows an organization to capitalize on all the various pros and overcome some of the cons. However, implementing a multi-platform system can be time-consuming. The software programming has to be able to func-tion consistently on different systems, which takes some work, but that also means you’ll be able to reach a wider range of customers once the programming is completed.

The decision to invest in open source will be determined by several factors unique to your orga-nization. You will need to consider the tasks you’re performing, the consistency – or usability – of the data you’re working with and the performance that your customers need and demand. If you need to process online transactions, you’ll require a different multi-platform strategy than if you’re designing web-based applications.

It’s worth noting that the expansion of the cloud has also helped fuel the growth of open-source databases. The cloud provides companies with a low-cost, low-impact landscape to try out different open-source options. This brings us to the second key trend.

Often, a multi-platform approach – in which open source is included – allows an organization to capitalize on all the various pros and overcome some of the cons.

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Getting your head in the cloud While on-premises database deployments will never fully disappear, the cloud is continuing to take on increasing prominence. More and more businesses are turning to the cloud to store more of their information. Whether employees, clients or customers, someone is always going to need to access data anytime and anywhere.

The cloud can provide peace of mind to those concerned with database storage and ensuring databases are running on the most up-to-date software. The cloud is also an important backup plan for production data-bases that support mission-critical applications, high availability needs or disaster recovery. And as the threat of cyberattack continues to increase, the need to have your data backed up and secure takes on paramount importance. Though cloud security has strengthened, it doesn’t yet match the protections of on-premises databases. That being said, it’s invaluable to have the backup insurance policy provided by the cloud if data is lost or stolen.

While the cloud offers many advantages, there are critical decisions you’ll have to make to ensure you capitalize on them effectively. Once you have decided to move into the cloud you will need to consider whether to implement a public or private model or a hybrid of the two. In the hybrid

While the cloud offers many advantages, there are critical decisions you’ll have to make to ensure you capitalize on them effectively.

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model, some of your data is isolated from other organizations and managed internally, while some sits on the public internet and is managed by a third-party vendor. Each option will impact security, acces-sibility and cost, so organizations have to determine what they want to prioritize. Those that choose the hybrid approach will also have to determine which databases go into a public cloud and which are kept in a private cloud. A well-thought-out hybrid solution balances the appropriate mix of security provided by storing your data internally with the affordability, scalability and convenience of the cloud.

Next, the determination has to be made between Database-as-a-Service or Infrastructure-as-a-Surface. With the former, outside vendors take on the bulk of the tasks typically reserved for DBAs, including handling upgrades, backups, monitoring and disaster recovery. With the latter, the respon-sibility for managing databases still rests with the DBAs. Organizations also need to choose whether performance problems will be handled in the cloud or in house. To some degree, this is a matter of how your IT experts feel most comfortable and confident troubleshooting problems and running disaster recovery, among other essential tasks.

There’s also the nitty-gritty of deciding whether to maintain your current service-level agreements (SLAs) with cloud vendors and other third-party vendors or create new ones. With new imple-mentations come new moving parts and more layered considerations. Organizations will have to determine for themselves whether they can fulfill their existing SLAs or whether changing circum-stances will require changing agreements.

Hanging over all these decisions is the big one: which cloud vendor to choose. There are numerous options out there, so organizations have to decide what’s most important to them. Reputation might be more important to one company while the offering’s alignment with the infrastructure already in place might be the top priority for another. Ultimately, it will be essential to determine the most cost-efficient way for your business to balance cloud with on-premises deployments, as well as which information and data is stored where.

Hanging over all these decisions is the big one: which cloud vendor to choose.

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Devops convergence The development team and the operations team have historically been in conflict on some level. This is because they have different but equally important priorities that require striking a delicate balance. Dev team members build applications and write code, among other tasks, while Ops team members oversee the infrastructure to ensure it is fundamen-tally sound. However, there is overlap, so many businesses recognized that they could reorganize and merge the two in order to operate more efficiently. The convergence of teams creates new challenges to navigate and decisions to make when considering the bottom line.

Application developers and infrastructure teams have clashing priorities when it comes to stability and performance issues. The Dev side is accustomed to being measured by how quickly and reliably they can get code changes into production. They’re used to developing code rapidly and getting it into production as quickly as possible, while also

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performing tasks that require continuous attention, such as deployment, integration and delivery.

Ops, on the other hand, is devoted to making sure processes run smoothly without constant monitoring. They’re not concerned with fast and continuous change – instead the Ops team’s main task is maintaining database stability through diagnostics, tuning and administration. This is vital to your organization because database changes aren’t sequential, and certain changes can’t be undone, like buggy code, because the data is changing constantly.

At the convergence of Dev and Ops – DevOps – is a balance. As DevOps becomes more widespread, companies are learning the importance of including database teams in these processes to support communication and collaboration. But they’re also starting to see the advantages a DevOps approach offers. A sound implementation of DevOps ensures your business data and processes are available and consistent throughout your organization, enabling you to make intelligent, cost-effective business decisions.

DevOps is about making incremental changes, pushing them out and then being agile enough to pull them back, fix them and push them back out if something is not quite right. For example, a software update

As DevOps becomes more widespread, companies are learning the importance of including database teams in these processes to support communication and collaboration.

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may have a bug in it that’s only detected after it’s been pushed out. The DevOps team will attempt to isolate the issue and fix it without disrupting the part of the programming that’s working properly, so there’s minimal disruption to the business and, especially, the end user.

In this new world, change and improvement are continuous, and can’t be reserved solely for the testing phase. Although the Ops team wants a smooth rollout that eliminates continuous monitoring, it is basically unavoidable. The DevOps team must always be on the lookout to ensure that performance is maintained and everything is working as intended, and should something go wrong, bugs can be fixed quickly. This moni-toring helps the company as a whole function better.

And this is the goal DevOps is trying to realize, after all. DevOps exists largely to clean up the issues and inefficiencies that can bog down sys-tems and negatively impact the organization. For example, the database development lifecycle can be a bottleneck that clogs up an otherwise smooth, efficient delivery process. A smartly run DevOps strategy that includes the database team will alleviate bottlenecks, so your company can operate smoothly.

A smartly run DevOps strategy that includes the database team will alleviate bottlenecks, so your company can operate smoothly.

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Final thoughts The rate of change in IT continues to accelerate. By anticipating, understanding and embracing changes in database management and monitoring, you’ll achieve success. But you don’t have to go it alone. With powerful solutions from Quest, you’ll maximize your cloud, open-source and DevOps initiatives. A toolset like Foglight for Databases provides unrivaled visibility across all your database platforms, empowering you to easily and proactively ensure peak database performance on legacy databases and new cloud and open-source platforms. And you can do it all from a single, intuitive console. With Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise, you can diagnose SQL Server performance issues quickly and accurately for a healthy database infrastructure. You can also use Spotlight Cloud for performance monitoring and diagnostics, powered by the cloud.

As businesses strive to reduce costs, DBAs must find new ways to adapt and thrive in the face of significant IT change. Expanding your knowledge by attending webcasts led by top industry experts, reading expert guides and arming yourself with easy-to-use solutions that improve database performance across a wide range of platforms will empower you to achieve cloud, open-source and DevOps success.

To learn more about how Quest can help, visit: quest.com/solutions/database-performance-monitoring/.

With powerful solutions from Quest, you’ll maximize your cloud, open-source and DevOps initiatives.

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ABOUT QUEST

Quest provides software solutions for the rapidly-changing world of enterprise IT. We help simplify the challenges caused by data explosion, cloud expansion, hybrid datacenters, security threats and regulatory requirements. We’re a global provider to 130,000 companies across 100 countries, including 95% of the Fortune 500 and 90% of the Global 1000. Since 1987, we’ve built a portfolio of solutions which now includes data-base management, data protection, identity and access management, Microsoft platform management and unified endpoint management. With Quest, organizations spend less time on IT administration and more time on business innovation. For more information, visit www.quest.com.

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