2 Operational Prerequisites to Maximizing Availability

2.1 Understand Availability and Performance SLAs

Understand and document your high availability and performance service-level agreements (SLAs) and create an outage and solution matrix:

• Document the business's cost of downtime, Recovery Time Objectives (RTO or recovery time) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO or data loss tolerance) for the outages described in Oracle Database High Availability Overview.

• Build an outage and solution matrix similar those shown in Table 13-1, "Recovery Times and Steps for Unscheduled Outages on the Primary Site" and Table 14-1, "Solutions for Scheduled Outages on the Primary Site".

2.2 Implement a High Availability Environment

Implement a high availability environment to achieve the optimal high availability architecture:

• Install or update your software with the latest certified patch sets

• Configure your software using best practices

• Document your choices and configuration

2.3 Validate Your Performance and Availability SLAs

Validate and automate repair operations to ensure that you meet your target HA service-level agreements (SLAs). You should validate the backup, restore, and recovery operations and periodically evaluate all repair operations for various types of possible outages (see Table 13-1 for more information).

If you use Oracle Data Guard for disaster recovery and data protection, Oracle recommends that you perform periodic switchover operations or conduct full application and database failover tests. Also, periodically execute Application and Data Guard switchovers to fully validate all role transition procedures. For more information see Section 2.8, "Execute Data Guard Role Transitions".

2.4 Set up and Use Security Best Practices

Corporate data can be at grave risk if placed on a system or database that does not have proper security measures in place. A well-defined security policy can help protect your systems from unwanted access and protect sensitive corporate information from sabotage. Proper data protection reduces the chance of outages due to security breaches. For more information, see the Oracle Database Security Guide.

2.5 Establish Change Control Procedures

Institute procedures that manage and control changes as a way to maintain the stability of the system and to ensure that no changes are incorporated in the primary database unless they have been rigorously evaluated on your test systems.

Review the changes and get feedback and approval from your change management team, which should include representatives for any component that affects the business requirements, functionality, performance, and availability of your system. For example, the team can include representatives for end-users, applications, databases, networks, and systems.

2.6 Provide a Plan to Test and Apply Recommended Patches and Software

By periodically testing and applying the latest recommended patches and software versions, you ensure that your system has the latest security and software fixes required to maintain stability and avoid many known issues. Remember to validate all updates and changes on a test system before performing the upgrade on the production system. For more information, see "Oracle Recommended Patches -- Oracle Database" in My Oracle Support Note 756671.1 at

https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=756671.1

2.7 Use Proper Testing and Patching Practices

Proper testing and patching are important prerequisites for preventing instability. You must validate any change in your test systems thoroughly before applying it to your production environment. These practices involve the following:

• Configuring the Test System and QA Environments

• Performing Pre-production Validation Steps

2.8 Execute Data Guard Role Transitions

When you have a standby database(s), it is important to ensure that the operations and DBA teams are well prepared to use the standby database(s) at anytime when the primary database is down or underperforming, according to a predetermined threshold. By reacting and executing efficiently, which includes detection and making the decision to failover, overall downtime can be reduced from hours to minutes.

If you use Oracle Data Guard for disaster recovery and data protection, Oracle recommends that you perform periodic switchover operations every quarter or conduct full application and database failover tests. For more information about configuring Oracle Data Guard and role transition best practices, see Chapter 9, "Configuring Oracle Data Guard" and Section 9.4.1, "Oracle Data Guard Switchovers Best Practices."

2.9 Establish Escalation Management Procedures

Establish escalation management procedures so repair is not hindered. Most repair solutions, when conducted properly are automatic and transparent with the MAA solution. The challenges occur when the primary database or system is not meeting availability or performance SLAs and failover procedures are not automatic as in the case with some Data Guard failover scenarios. Downtime can be prolonged if proper escalation policies are not followed and decisions are not made quickly.

Availability is the top priority, and a contingency plan should be created to gather sufficient data for future Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

For more information about MAA outage and repair, check the MAA web page on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at

http://www.oracle.com/goto/maa

2.10 Configure Monitoring and Service Request Infrastructure for High Availability

To maintain your High Availability environment, you should configure the monitoring infrastructure that can detect and react to performance and high availability related thresholds. Also, where available, Oracle can detect failures, dispatch field engineers, and replace failing hardware without customer involvement.

2.11 Check the Latest MAA Best Practices

MAA solutions continue to emerge for all platforms and for different Exadata Database Machine releases. Periodically check the MAA web page on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) at

http://www.oracle.com/goto/maa