Database and storage management: new storage-management products reduce administration and accelerate transactions - Storage Networking

Computer Technology Review, Jan, 2003 by Calvin Hsu

Expedient Upgrades

Database owners, managers and users continually cope with the ongoing series of software and hardware upgrades that disrupt business. Administrators must generate a sample database for upgrade testing, recreate the operating environment of the production server, and then apply the upgrades. This procedure, as well as the new environment, is tested thoroughly. After the upgrade is approved, administrators must take the production servers offline during odd hours, reproduce the exact series of steps for each server and hope that the database returns to operation without any unexpected consequences. In large enterprises with many application servers, this is a tedious, labor-intensive and risky process.

When centralizing and deploying 135 financial database servers, the maintenance implications were apparent to Conseco Finance. They simplified the process with extensive use of snapshotting.

First, the IT staff configured a model server. Scripting triggers the snapshot feature to automatically generate 134 more copies of the same basic setup, which are then quickly and non-disruptively allocated. In the case of an upgrade, they simply configure one server to the new specifications, then use the same routine to deploy the upgrade.

"Setting up all these servers with all the right software components would have been a time-consuming and painful process had it not been for [the] snapshot feature... As we maintain and update these systems going forward, the snapshot feature will be an integral part of deployment," according to Lucero.

Get Back to Business

Business-line managers who depend on database operations can improve productivity and reliability by taking advantage of modem storage networking functionality. Some common database practices developed for expediency's sake to compensate for the shortcomings of storage devices can now be improved by more flexible, centralized storage-network-management-software capabilities. In turn, those with financial responsibility for operations benefit from increased efficiencies, utilization and performance. As an added advantage, both DBAs and storage administrators can rid themselves of tedious back-end storage concerns and focus more attention on other critical operations.

Industry        Database Application  Avg. Cost/Hour of Downtime

Transportation  Airline reservations          $   89,500
Retail             Catalog sales              $   90,000
Retail            Home TV shopping            $  113,000
Media               Pay-per-view              $1,150,000
Financial        Credit card sales            $2,600,000
Financial       Brokerage operations          $6,500,000

Calvin Hsu is product marketing manager at DataCore Software (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.)

www.datacore.com