A Structured Approach to Database Administration using the principles of ITIL and ITSM

1. A Structured Approach to Database Administration using the principles of ITIL and ITSM By Iggy Fernandez

2. Speaker Introduction • 10+ years of Oracle DBA experience • Previously, Manager of Database Administration Services at Corio • Currently, Lead DBA at Intacct A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

3. Presentation Structure • Part I - Problem Statement • Part II - Other approaches • Part III - ITIL and ITSM A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

4. Part I – The Problem Statement

5. How many DBAs does it take to change a light bulb? • “A chief technology officer of a G2000 company recently told me that he had three database administrators (DBAs) managing 130 instances of software on a 24/7 basis. I shuddered at the thought. No matter how qualified and knowledgeable those individuals might be, three IT professionals were not sufficient for the task” – Dr Tim Chou – President, Oracle Outsourcing A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

6. What are the deliverables of the DBA function? • “What is a DBA's responsibility? This million-dollar question is difficult for most IS organizations--let alone DBAs themselves--to answer” – Published Oracle author • “If you don't know Which to Do, Of all the things in front of you, Then what you'll have when you are through, Is just a mess without a clue” – Winnie the Pooh Bear A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

7. Wiretap Recording First DBA: it seems very quiet this week... First DBA: i don't think i'll have 4 - 5 hours of real work Second DBA: why don’t you enter the time for regular db maintenance on the servers First DBA: uhhhhhhhhhhh, what regular maint? First DBA: there hasn't been any this week Second DBA: but at least you can enter the time for proactive maintenance First DBA: what proactive maint? First DBA: haven't touched a box this week. Second DBA: check the error log and other db related logs First DBA: hmmmmm A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

8. HA technology does not produce HA • Intel DBA writes quickie script • eBay DBA types in wrong window • Amazon database cannot be restarted A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

9. Wiretap Recording First DBA: too many fires Second DBA: ? First DBA: oh the usual First DBA: prod is down, archive logs missing First DBA: etc etc First DBA: and everybody is running around like a headless chicken A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

10. Recap – The Problem Statement • Inadequate staffing? • No consensus on deliverables • No rating methodology • Bad things happen easily • HA Technology does not produce HA A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

11. Part II – Other Approaches

12. Capability Maturity Model (Software Development) • INITIAL – “Individual Heroics” • REPEATABLE – Basic Processes e.g. Project Management, Quality Assurance • DEFINED – Documentation, Standardization, Integration, Communication • MANAGED – Monitoring, Measurement, Reporting • OPTIMIZING – Continuous Improvement A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

13. Other Quality Management Systems • ISO 9000 family • Six Sigma A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

14. Deficiencies of Quality Management Systems • No specific guidance for I.T. (SW-CMM) • No specific guidance for any field (ISO 9000) • Only applicable to manufacturing (Six Sigma) • Top-heavy bureaucracy A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

15. COBIT • Control Objectives for Information Technology • “Controls” and “Control Objectives” • Key Success Factors • Key Goal Indicators • Key Performance Indicators A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

16. What about SAS 70? • Not a check list of best practices – no such thing as “SAS 70 compliance” • Auditing methodology published by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants • Type I and Type II audits • Can hide as much as they reveal A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

17. Part III – ITIL and ITSM

18. I.T. Service Management • Created by the U.K. government • Described in the ITIL publications (I.T. Infrastructure Library) • Adopted by I.T. Service Providers like IBM Global Services and by Fortune 100 companies like eBay and Genentech • 10 interrelated management processes in two groups (over-simplification) A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

19. Service Support • Incident Management • Problem Management • Configuration Management • Change Management • Release Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

20. “Restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and minimize the adverse impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Reactive, Break-fix Database down, Database slow, Job failure, Schema Changes, Add users Service Desk, Call Center, Ticketing System, P1, SEV-1 24x7, Remote Access, VPN Incident Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

21. “Minimize the adverse impact of Incidents and Problems on the business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of Incidents related to these errors” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Proactive, Root Cause Analysis, Post-Mortem, Trend Analysis Keep separate from Incident Management Problem Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

22. “Provide accurate information on configurations and their documentation to support all the other Service Management processes” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series How does Server A differ from Server B? Who has access to Server A? Which patches have been applied to this Peoplesoft environment? When does the Support Contract expire? Who is the Business Owner? Configuration Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

23. “Ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all Changes, in order to minimize the impact of Change related incidents upon service quality, and consequently to improve the day-to-day operations of the organization” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Risk Analysis, ROI Analysis Pre-Test Plan Pre-Communication Plan Pre-Signoffs Backup Plan Execution Plan Backout Plan Post-Test Plan Post-Communication Plan Post-Signoffs Documentation Updates Contingency Plan Updates Change Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

24. “Design and implement efficient procedures for the distribution and installation of Changes to I.T. Systems” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Installs Upgrades Patches Release Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

25. Service Delivery • Service Level Management • Financial Management • Capacity Management • Continuity Management • Availability Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

26. “Maintain and improve I.T. Service quality, through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring and reporting upon I.T. Service achievements and instigation of actions to eradicate poor service – in line with business or cost justification” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Service Level Agreements Operational Level Agreements Satisfaction Surveys Service Level Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

27. “Provide cost-effective stewardship of the I.T. assets and resources used in providing I.T. Services” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Hardware, Software, Personnel, Facilities, Service Contracts TCO, ROI, Budgeting, Accounting, Charging Server Consolidation, Standard Edition, Colocation, Linux, Open Source Financial Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

28. “Ensure that cost-justifiable I.T. capacity always exists and that it is matched to the current and future needs of the business” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Monitoring Tuning! Capacity Planning Demand Management Capacity Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

29. “Support the overall Business Continuity Management process by ensuring that the required I.T. technical and service facilities (including computer systems, networks, applications, technical support and Service Desk) can be recovered within required, and agreed, business timescales” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Disaster Recovery, Contingency Planning Fire, earthquake, flood, power failure Continuity Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

30. “Understand the Availability requirements of the business and plan, measure, monitor and continuously improve the Availability of the I.T. Infrastructure, services and supporting organization to ensure that these requirements are met consistently” – Best Practice for Service Delivery – ITIL Series Availability is Job #1! High Availability, Data Guard Redundancy, RAC SAN, NAS, Active-Passive Configuration Backups! Backups! Backups! Test! Test! Test! Availability Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

31. What are the deliverables of the DBA function? • A stable, secure and resilient infrastructure • A log or database or all operational events, alerts and alarms • A set of operational scripts • A resilience and fail-over testing schedule • A set of operational work schedules A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

32. What are the deliverables of the DBA function? • A set of operational management tools • Management reports and information • Exception reviews and reports • Review and audit reports • A secure Operational Document Library A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

33. Do we have the time? • Quadrant I – Activities that are Important and Urgent e.g. Incident Management • Quadrant II – Activities that are Important but not Urgent e.g. Configuration Management • Quadrant III – Activities that are not Important but Urgent • Quadrant IV – Activities that are not Important and not urgent A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

34. Recap (How many DBAs does it take to fix a light bulb?) • Rate each ITSM focus area • Rate the quality of each deliverable • Decide what level you want to reach • Determine how much work is involved • Determine how many DBAs you need A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

35. Further Reading • CMM sei.cmu.edu/cmm/ • Six Sigma ge.com/sixsigma/ • ISO 9000 iso.org • COBIT isaca.org • SAS 70 systemexperts.com/tutors/sas70.pdf • ITSM itsmf.com A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

36. ITIL Series • Best Practice for Service Delivery • Best Practice for Service Support • Best Practice for ICT Infrastructure Management • Best Practice for Application Management • Best Practice for Security Management A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION

37. Q & A • Send e-mail to iggy_fernandez@hotmail.com A STRUCTURED APPROACH TO DATABASE ADMINISTRATION