Down here in New Zealand we love DIY. In fact, it’s part of our national identity to ‘do it yourself’ and us Kiwis are widely purported to be able to fashion almost anything out of a length of number 8 wire.  This is why at Dbvisit we are respectful of those companies (who are lucky enough to have such creative and resourceful staff) that decide to develop their own standby database solution (manual log shipping) as part of their Oracle disaster recovery strategy.

Unfortunately DIY projects don’t always stick to plan (or budget) and can be somewhat experimental, often costing more to manage and support than originally anticipated. When it comes to disaster recovery, if your data is critical to the business continuing to function it is essential to to have the best solution you can afford in place. If you’re weighing up DIY versus ‘off the shelf’, here are some important considerations to look at:

  • Has the DBA covered all the bases? (bearing in mind it is very difficult to test and simulate all the issues that can go wrong).
  • Is it going to be reliable, stable and easy to support in the long run?
  • What happens when the DBA that developed the script leaves your organisation, is there someone else who knows how it works?
  • Will a new DBA understand how the script works and be confident enough to use it (and fix it) when things go wrong?
  • What will happen when you upgrade or patch Oracle? Will you be confident that it still works?
  • What will happen if you migrate to another platform?
  • What happens if there is a temporary glitch. Will it automatically recover and continue without intervention from the DBA?
  • Does it support the Oracle features such as RAC, OMF, ASM?
  • Does it create the standby database automatically?

Using a proven, reliable and stable solution like Dbvisit can really pay off in the long term. Dbvisit works on most platforms that are supported by Oracle including Windows, Linux and Unix and is backed by world class support. The team behind Dbvisit specialises in Oracle Disaster Recovery and as such are fully committed to ensuring you have full confidence in your Disaster Recovery solution.

Whichever path you decide to take, the most important things to think about are: Have I really done the right thing by my data? Does my solution tick all the boxes and protect my data the way it needs to be  protected? Have I thought about the long term effect of my decision on my departmental budget?

www.dbvisit.com