Databases store critical business information and are an essential part of the efficient operation of modern businesses. Oftentimes, databases are used for mission-critical activities. These databases are not only required to be available around the clock, but support complex queries with many nested joins at split-second performance levels.
As the business demand for databases increases, so does the potential for errors. For example, failing to apply a security patch to one of your databases can create vulnerabilities. If a database is not secure, an enterprise is at a heightened risk for data breaches and all of the negative repercussions as a result.
Additionally, applications continuously add new records to databases or use existing information to create reports, analyze trends, etc. This can cause databases to grow to many terabytes in size, making them highly complex, more difficult to secure, and more difficult to tune for better performance. Databases that are slow-running or unavailable can cause an organization to experience a drastic loss of performance.
How Oracle’s Autonomous Database Eases the Burden—
While databases have had heuristics for years that provide varying levels of operational automation, what is new with Oracle’s autonomous database is the use of machine learning. Several new and key technologies drive Oracle’s autonomous database to automate more functions than traditional databases.
- The database is self-driving: All database tasks including infrastructure management, monitoring, and tuning are automated.
- Self-securing: Built-in capabilities automatically protect against external attacks and malicious internal users. Patches and fixes are automated.
- Self-Repairing: Over 99.995% availability. On average, Oracle autonomous database has less than 2.5 minutes of downtime per month or 25 minutes per year.
Overall, Oracle boasts the following features of the autonomous database:
- Auto-Provisioning: Automatically deploys mission-critical databases that are fault-tolerant and highly available. Enables seamless scale-out, protection in case of a server failure, and allows updates to be applied in a rolling fashion while apps continue to run.
- Auto-Configuration: Automatically configures the database to optimize for specific workloads. Everything from the memory configuration, the data formats, and access structures are optimized to improve performance. Customers can simply load data and go.
- Auto-Indexing: Automatically monitors workload and detects missing indexes that could accelerate applications. It validates each index to ensure its benefit before implementing it and uses machine learning to learn from its own mistakes.
- Auto-Scaling: Automatically scales compute resources when needed by workload. All scaling occurs online while the application continuously runs. Enables true pay per use.
- Automated Data Protection: Automatically protects sensitive and regulated data in the database, all via a unified management console. Assesses the security of your configuration, users, sensitive data, and unusual database activities.
- Automated Security: Automatic encryption for the entire database, backups, and all network connections. No access to OS or admin privileges prevents phishing attacks. Protects the system from both cloud operations and any malicious internal users.
- Auto-Backups: Automatic daily backup of database or on-demand. Restores or recovers a database to any point in time you specify in the last 60 days.
- Auto-Patching: Automatically patches or upgrades with zero downtime. Applications continue to run as patching occurs in a round-robin fashion across cluster nodes or servers.
- Automated Detection and Resolution: Using pattern recognition, hardware failures are automatically predicted without long timeouts. IOs are immediately redirected around unhealthy devices to avoid database hangs. Continuous monitoring for each database automatically generates service requests for any deviation.
- Automatic Failover: Automatic failover with zero data loss to standby. It’s completely transparent to end-user applications. Provides 99.995% SLA.
Customers who use ECM platforms such as WebCenter Content can experience many of the innovative features of the autonomous database including auto-scaling to match workload demands and search optimization.
Overall, data is being generated at a rate that is quickly outpacing the rate at which it can be managed. Oracle autonomous database refocuses the workload of businesses to IT innovation rather than mundane, repeatable, mistake-prone tasks.
Is your organization looking for a solution to optimize WebCenter Content? Schedule a free consultation with us today to learn about the latest and greatest technologies that integrate with WebCenter Content to offload managed server demand.
