Remote Oracle DBA: Moving to the Cloud

If you have been thinking of migrating to the cloud, then your DBA or database administrator should look at the pros and cons in order to figure out if this transition will work well with the goals and resources of the organization. Your database administrator is a key person in planning and implementing the process of moving to cloud services. The reason for this is that he or she has the expertise, knowledge, and technical skills, which when coupled with his or her intimate familiarity with your business, will go a long way in ensuring that the project succeeds.

There are several benefits to moving to the cloud if you execute it all well. You can do away with the need to have your administrator install the database, configure it, as well as do the provisioning. As such, the database is able to scale based on the need.

In the past, you needed to have a physical server on the premises, but today virtual technology has made it possible to move some of your workloads to virtual machines. Even with this abstract element, the DBA will still have direct control of the configuration of all things starting with the operating system. Virtualization will decrease your burden where setting up the equipment and configuring it is concerned and you also will not have to maintain any hardware. It should be noted, though, that the performance of virtual databases is very much dependent on how healthy your VMs (dedicated servers) are. Should there be failure, or a fault with one of these, you will need to have someone fix it as soon as possible.

The cloud is a virtualized environment but on a big scale. Because there are many machines working behind the scenes, should one machine not work right, the load is shifted to another one automatically. When a machine fails, the hosting services remains worry-free. They don’t have to send someone in urgently to fix it. Because its maintenance is carried out in intervals, they are able to have a single person overseeing lots of servers.

Here are some advantages that you can exploit in varying degrees should you decide to move some of your workloads to the cloud:

• Reduction of costs associated with development, design, and administration — This can be done by removing the burden of hardware, hardware plus, software, infrastructure and platform as a service. All you have to do now is to logon and you are ready to use your application.
• Availability — The awesome thing about the cloud is that as long as you have internet connection, you will be able to access it wherever you are. Additionally, they take redundancy very serious, which means that your uptime percentage is very high. Some organizations that understand this but still have on-site applications use the cloud as their failover plan, which gives them higher uptime as well since the risk of downtown is mitigated.
• Scaling up — If you will be scaling up, then you need to consider the economies of scale. The cloud tends to be cheaper for those who are scaling up because the cloud holds the needed disk space and horsepower. This means that you don’t have to purchase the necessary hardware to scale up.
• Scaling out — Cloud applications that are designed in such a way as to allow workloads and data sharing over multiple work nodes are able to exploit horizontal scaling on a massive scale.
• Strategy — Your onsite administrator is released to take roles that are more strategic because the cloud handles rote tasks that have to do with balancing workload or tuning performance. He or she is, therefore, able to provide services that are value added that can enhance the operational efficiency of the organization and therefore give it a competitive edge. The database administrator is also able to give opinions regarding the resources and appropriate sizes necessary to ensure that cloud operations are optimal based on his or her knowledge of the needs of the business.

It is important that the Oracle remote DBA work closely with those who are closely associated with the business in order to develop an operational plan that is comprehensive. The plan should include resiliency and security in the event that the cloud services offered fail. If you are hoping to maintain twenty-four seven mission critical services and data, then this will be very important.

One of the most serious issues when moving to the cloud is database security (here are a few security-related tutorials you might be interested to read: Tutorial: Building Modern & Secure PHP Applications, Using Vault to Secure Your Deployment Secrets, and iOS Security: Best Practices in Safeguarding User Data). It is, therefore, important for the Oracle remote DBA to provide the necessary assurance that their critical information such as private data, competitive and financial information as well as intellectual assets will remain secure and will also meet any governmental mandates laid down by the State.

When you select cloud vendors, you may find that they offer NoSQL and SQL services together, or they may just offer one. The vendors who offer NoSQL tend to be more than those who offer SQL. Many times you will also find that the vendors offer what they commonly refer to as specialty services. These may include database backup, middleware, and migration services. There are other firms though that may offer you managed services designed to complement the cloud-hosting as well as any other offerings they may have on cloud.

Wrapping up

It is important to note that just because you will be moving to the cloud, it is not to say that the DBA you have in-house will be abdicating his or her responsibilities. There are duties and tasks that will change once the shift to the cloud occurs, but your DBA will still have a very valuable role to play in your organization. One of those roles is to act as a liaison between your company and the remote DBA since he has more knowledge of the inner workings of your enterprise and can offer valuable information that will then be used in the provision of quality services to you. With a better understanding of your needs, you can expect a better service from your cloud vendor.

Author's Bio:

Sujain Thomas is an online marketer focusing more on social media marketing. She is also a registered Oracle remote DBA. She is committed to helping startups unveil their full potential in online marketing.