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The Biggest Challenges to Tackle in Cross Platform Database Management

If you are like any other database administrator, your life may become more difficult as the needs and challenges related to enterprise database administration are ever-increasing. Most of the traditional database admins are under pressure to manage an ever-growing number of database instances and with the need to adopt new database technologies as open-source or NoSQL etc. With all such changes, DBAs still need to ensure optimum quality, stability, and performance of your database environment.

A survey shows that:

  • 72% of the DBAs stay responsible for the increasing number of databases.
  • 69% of the DBAs consider performance as their primary responsibility.
  • 645 of Dbas find that cloud makes a large impact on their role.

However, many database administrators have not prepared to face the changing database administration scenario’s challenges as they come. Each changing situation is unique, and the solutions for those also keep on changing. Here, we will explore some of the most complicated challenges in cross-platform database management and ways to handle them.

Multiple database platform management

With many mergers, acquisitions, and developmental projects, there are many unprecedented business scenarios now, and modern-day organizations are adopting various types of databases. Among other business scenarios, enterprises are adopting various types of databases. These databases are not only being just added, but the DBAs are asked to manage them too in a faultless way. The major challenges here are that many DBAs count on themselves as experts in some database platforms, their expertise in the given databases to the new platforms they are not exposed to. But, in many situations’ technologies do not always translate that way. For example, the SQL Server may not behave the same way as to how MongoDB works, nor does Oracle act the same way as PostgreSQL.

To monitor a cross-platform database environment adequately, it is important first to understand the basic needs to ensure your data’s availability and sustainability. Once the basic needs of availability and recovery are ensured, only you can advance to more complex tasks like performance tuning, ensuring security, and maintaining availability. The DBMS monitoring services can facilitate these challenges; however, monitoring can also be complicated as each of these database platforms has unique tools, methods, and APIs to administer this. The learning curve for the same may be bigger. However, you can administer the same with the assistance of skilled and experienced consultants also. Many providers offer remote database administration services for small or big enterprises to do their database planning and implementation without hassle. RemoteDBA is one such reliable provider with a solid presence in the database management industry for many years now.

Handling different database editions

Many vendors offer different database editions to fit the users’ varying needs, as featured enterprise editions, low-cost standard editions, and an expressed edition. Such vendors also offer many monitoring tools with many features, but such tools may require additional licenses and features of expensive enterprise edition. With multiple platforms being used, this can become cost prohibitive as your needs increase. With limited capacity for diagnostic operations, the DBAs may have fewer tools to resolve problems and less control over the databases, which again adds to their frustration.

Managing larger DBMS environments

DBAs can also see that the number of databases is increasing rapidly. More databases mean there is only less time to spend on managing different databases and troubleshooting each database’s issues. Many larger database environments demand the DBAs move rapidly from management of individual databases to capacity planning or inventory management all at once. This balancing act may make it increasingly more difficult for the DBAs as the environment and numbers of databases grow in size. This also gets fraught with risks for more downtime and other unforeseen challenges. So you must understand all these aspects before you use database for your business. 

Maintaining databases at different locations

Besides being on on-premises or the cloud, databases may reside on different physical servers or virtual servers. In global enterprises, the databases could be anywhere in the world, which the DBAs have to manage remotely. Remote data centers are necessary to ensure better data distribution and more precise business intelligence, and greater scalability. However, DBAs need to more efficiently monitor and diagnose their universal database environments’ performance to keep all the related systems and applications up and running smoothly round the clock. This will ensure that your business operations are flawless at all times. Iy will also help in bringing great rewards to your business.

Managing databases with only minimal overhead

Performance monitoring is the key to trying out cross-platform DB management; however, frequently, the monitoring tools themselves may drag in terms of performance. The major culprit here is a misuse of high-overhead APIs to pull the database server’s performance data. Each of such platforms will have unique APIs, and many such APIs will have complex configurations too. Choosing the wrong API or misconfiguration of a specific option will create a very troublesome overhead, and it will also lead to more downtime.

Measures to take

It will be a wonderful approach if the DBAs may learn and apply their knowledge to all new platforms they manage and let it ripple out to the cloud by keeping a centralized and constant approach to have a centralized view on things in their DBMS environments grow and evolve. However, it is more complicated to accomplish than said. There are many solutions now to help the database administrators confidently meet all these challenges and tackle them effectively. These solutions will offer a deeper insight into the performance and health of various databases regardless of the platforms they work on and the servers’ number of locations.

Once you have adequate tools and resources to administer a cross-platform database environment, you can confidently move ahead with advanced enterprise database administration practices. Data is not only there for you to store and retrieve, but effective utilization of data now helps businesses to do resource planning, forecasting, and business decision making, etc.

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Helper

Helen is a multi-published, award-winning author of over 30 books, including the delightful Ivy & Bean series. She has written novels for young adults, including YA romantic comedies, and has written BBC drama.

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