Practical Lessons – Backup & Recovery (B&R) - basics of recovering a whole virtual machine

David Phizacklea presenting at UKOUG Availability Infrastructure and Management SIG
14 March 2012, London City Oracle Office.

These days it is taken as read that backup procedures are in place and working. It is a growing area of concern for both enterprise and small business as these procedures are often overlooked and neglected.The talk will include discussion on how tighter service level agreement contracts and high availability implementations on virtual machines should be configured. He will also run through an SLA backup plan and proposes to recover an Oracle database system hosted on a virtual server. More information



The Perils of Assumption

What drives us to commit resources so that we can make sure what should have happened has happened?

Why do we have to spend our time checking that everything is working as it should be?

I guess these traits come from the approach of not assuming anything and the need to verify everything.

It’s curious to draw comparisons between different aspects of our desire to implement the belt and braces approach and to trust that things are working until you are told there is a problem.

The Spike in the Steering Wheel

Someone once said to me that the best safety device they could install in a car would be an 8 inch spike sticking out of the middle of the steering wheel. It would certainly make sure that we all took a lot more care over our driving and left enough distance to stop!

High Level Whitepaper on Backups

A new high-level paper on backups is now available for download. Be sure to get your comments back to Phiz through posting your comments below.

This document is not intended to be a full technical white paper on backup and recovery of computer systems, but an overview document that it is hoped the layman can understand. Please do not take it as the “law” for backing up your system(s) or use it to bash someone who has tried to help you and not fulfilled your every desire – enjoy it for what it is and use it as a template to get you on the right road to “recovery”.

The Wheel – I’m sure someone’s done that!

You know I’ve just invented this device – its round, has a small hole in the middle and works really well if you put two of them together connected by a pole. I’ll call it the wheel – what’s that? Someone’s already thought of it!!

How many times do we reinvent the same solution to a problem? How many times do we not communicate that we have developed a solution? How many times are solutions not shared?

If you were to sit down and work out the cost of the effort wasted in poor management of the tools developed and the procedures implemented in the management of an organisation’s database estate, the chances are you would be pretty concerned about the impact on your operational budget.

The low hanging fruit in achieving "Better for less"

We’ve been attending a few conferences lately focused on the current government initiative “Better for Less” and had plenty of discussions with prospective clients. The predominant theme is, as a tax payer myself, very welcome. Public sector departments and organisations are being actively encouraged to make smarter procurements and to look for the best value from all sources with a particular emphasis on the innovative solutions that can be procured through SME’s at a local level. Great for UK PLC and for us as citizens.

For far too long, in my opinion, the procurement function of the public sector has been dominated by inflexible framework agreements and only been assailable by the large systems houses. Any scraps from the table have been generally given to preferred partners and the contracts associated with delivery so challenging as to deter all but the most desperate and those who want the business at any cost.

Making Outsourcing a Safer Option

Outsourcing is a viable strategy to manage the requirement to control and reduce costs and create a more flexible and reactive resourcing platform; however too many times we have heard the horror stories of when it goes wrong. Successful outsourced relationships are more likely to be achieved when both the customer and the service provider make the effort to ensure that the control mechanisms are in place to provide independent measurement and visibility of service levels and status.