2021 is a crucial year and digital transformation is the key to survival for most businesses in the Pandemic Era. If you are a business owner and want to avoid the closure of your company, be ready to brace the challenges posed by the COVID-19 virus as it still holds sway across the world. Vaccinations have started in several parts of the globe however; the threats of the coronavirus still loom high. The secret to business continuity is to embrace the best database management practices so that you are able to safeguard your SQL database environments for the best results when it comes to survival strategies during the Pandemic.
Get a comprehensive health check of your database done
Like people, your database needs a health check regularly. These health check reports offer you a complete holistic review of the database server environment. The report will give you an insight into the CPU usage, disk performance and server memory. You effectively can make the desired changes to the database to create a customized business action plan as per the findings of the health check reports.
Must To Do Database Management Activities for DBA
Now, let us take a look at the following 10 indispensable activities that every DBA must do.
- Testing- Remote access testing of the database platform covering related systems, for instance, monitoring, is today the need of the hour. Make sure you have a level support team with all the contacts listed for escalation along with a modern, up-to-date second database backup unit in place.
- Performance of the monitoring tools for your database system– Check whether the monitoring tools of your database system are functioning at the expected levels. The same holds true for any tool you embrace for database system alerts. For example, SQL Beacon, SCOM etc. Ensure the alerts are fired at the accurate time and delivered when needed.
- Incorporate tests for disaster recovery- These tests should be done to ensure all the business-critical systems are adhering to the SLAs agreed upon. They mitigate issues in the documentation process that might have arisen in the previous tests.
- Proactive capacity planning- You should get all the reports for proactive capacity planning in place against database environments for assisting teams to prepare for an unexpected sudden growth in the database system. You must ensure there is sufficient database capacity to manage these situations as and when they arise.
- Functionality health-checks– All database performance health-checks must be scheduled and executed on your database systems critical for business operations. They must remediate potential problems with customized action plans catering to the required SLAs and OLAs.
- Detailed analysis of past incidents and alerts– DBAs should work on reports that focus on a detailed analysis of past alerts and incidents to analyse significant database trends. They should formulate plans to arrest issues with permanent solutions as and when needed.
- Database patches must be up-to-date– Make sure all your Windows and SQL patches are up-to-date according to the permitted database environments. They should be tested in reduced environments and deployed in the production environment as feasible.
- Database and server audits should be enabled– When you enable database and server audits, they help your business keep track of any changes you might have applied at that time. This helps you to track issues to its source with ease.
- Simple exception report- This report helps you to encapsulate all the fundamental metrics for the database performance, critical alerts and incidents for job failures. It will assist everyone in the business loop to know what takes place in the database environment.
- Pause change freeze-This is an effective strategy that reduces the rate of change that passes though the database environment. They are often the cause of degradation or outages in your database performance. In case, you cannot implement the pause change freeze, you should incorporate strict change control instead.
The current COVID-19 Pandemic has brought new challenges for businesses across the world. The dependence on cloud systems, departmental servers and data centres are extremely important. Every business should pay attention to cyber-security and remote workers must rely on secure VPNs to work from home to ensure business continuity without threats.
