3. first day first week
the only thing you are not allowed to get wrong as a DBA is recovery
=> be taught everything about the current recovery process :
how to do it,
where everything is,
how many copies of backups they have,
what machines they test this on regularly.
Learn the data recovery policies and make sure they make sense to you.
I come into new databases every week (I’m a consultant), and this is what I do:
- I start at the high-level examining the server, disk farms and network.
- Next I look at the crontabs and review all external scheduled job on all servers.
- Next, I look at the server-side files /etc/oratab (var/opt/oratab), tnsnames.ora, listener.ora and most important, the file locations, hoping that they are OFA!
- At each instance, I start by examining the init.ora.
- I then do a security audit, looking for vulnerabilities.
- I then peek into STATSPACK (or AWR) to see any trends in poor performance.
related notes on DBA job duties:
Question: I’m starting a new job and I need a checklist for things that I would examine. What are the common things that a DBA will look at when they start a new job?
Answer: That’s a great question, especially since the average stay for a DBA is under four years!
I’ve done pre-acquisition evaluations, and it’s not pleasant. The old DBA knows why you are there (he is going to lose his job) and there is a lot of resistance. At a high-level, I look to see if they follow Oracle best practices, but I usually find lots of worst practices! See here for details on Oracle worst practices.
What you examine depends on the scope of your role as a DBA. Will you have root access? Will you have complete control over the I/O subsystem?
In general, all DBA’s need to survey for these duties:
– Data modeling and Oracle database design
– Data interface protocols
– Managing data security
– Managing development projects
– Predicting future Oracle trends for hardware usage and user load (capacity planning)
– Install, patch and maintain all Oracle software
– Tune all Oracle instance components including SQL and PL/SQL
– Approve all production schema changes
– Approve changes to database design
– Control all migrations of Oracle schema objects
– Design and implement a backup & recovery system
– Implement Oracle failover technology