E-Handbook:
Oracle Database monitoring, tuning deliver performance goods
Article 1 of 4
Keep your Oracle databases on the right performance path
Keeping Oracle Database running smoothly is a complicated process. Brian Peasland, a database administrator and SearchOracle contributor, compares it to navigating a maze -- one with numerous entrances and exits.
The entrances correspond to different Oracle Database monitoring and performance tuning tools, while the exits are the various ways to resolve a performance problem that individual tools point to, Peasland wrote in a July 2017 blog post. Figuring out which tool leads to the right fix requires a lot of trial and error. "Only experience can tell you which one is best," Peasland said. And even with that experience, wrong turns are common, he added.
It also isn't enough for database administrators (DBAs) to identify and remedy the technical causes of Oracle performance problems, according to Mark Burgess, CEO and founder of Burgess Systems Consulting. They need to work with end users to assess the business impact that issues have, he said in a September 2018 blog. Otherwise, measuring whether performance fixes actually benefit an organization "becomes a guess at best," Burgess wrote.
Cloud systems may reduce some aspects of database performance management work, as cloud platform providers take over the underlying IT infrastructure and Oracle pushes its Autonomous Database service, which the vendor touts as self-tuning.
But the need for effective Oracle Database monitoring will only get more acute, said Chris Foot, vice president of delivery strategies and technologies at database services company Remote DBA Experts, which calls itself RDX. "Resource monitoring becomes more important in the cloud," Foot said in an interview. "If you exceed the allocated resources, cloud vendors could throttle back your computing power, or you could get forced into a more expensive tier."
This handbook provides insight and advice on Oracle Database performance management and the tools that DBAs can tap to help them meet the challenges they face.
