Cloud represents a new way of approaching database management, potentially relieving enterprise data shops of many administrative burdens. But in reality, for the DBA, the cloud has also become the new bottleneck because developers can open up new cloud accounts so easily, which immediately become a new responsibility for the DBAs who are the gatekeepers. This trend will only increase as cloud continues to grow in the industry, Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman, technical intelligence manager for the Office of CTO, Delphix, who presented a session at Data Summit 2017, titled, “Database Management & the Cloud.”
While Amazon is the dominant player in the cloud market today, don’t count anyone out just yet, cautioned Pot’Vin-Gorman. Anything can change and cloud providers are competing fiercely - just like mobile phone services providers - and taking customers from each other. Oracle is targeting Microsoft as much as it is targeting Amazon, she added.
According to Pot’Vin-Gorman, cloud is clearly in place already or at least on the horizon for most organizations:
- 85% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy
- 77% are hybrid cloud
- Workloads are being run in the cloud:
- 41% in public clouds
- 38% in private clouds
- Enterprise companies are choosing cloud:
- 65% want public cloud
- 63% want private cloud solutions
- 93% will be hybrid
However, she noted, despite the off-touted cost savings and ease of administration of moving to the cloud, there are a number of considerations that organizations must be aware of. As companies increasingly utilize cloud services, they need to be cognizant of hidden costs. Every time you do a migration there is data in flight charge, she said. There are a lot of different pricing models to choose from and they often don’t take into consideration data in flight.
Four key steps for ensuring a successful cloud migration are:
- Tune SQL and Apps to perform efficiently as possible – the natural life of database is growth, (in processes, resources, etc.) – before migrating.
- The less network latency, the better - network tracing to eliminate database blame is important.
- Many of the same tools and data provide value – The AWR (Automatic Workload Repository) is your friend!
- Take advantage of cloud monitoring tools that can ease the learning curve as you migrate to the cloud.
According to Pot’Vin-Gorman, among the best cloud monitoring and management tools (in alphabetical order) are:
Many conference presentations have been made available by speakers at www.dbta.com/datasummit/2017/presentations.aspx.