{ Abhilash Kumar Bhattaram : Follow on LinkedIn }
In Oracle environments, downtime is often treated as a price — measured in missed SLAs, lost transactions, and hours of late-night recovery.
Price is what you pay. Have you considered the cost ?
Robert Angier: Price is not an object.
Nikola Tesla: Perhaps not, but have you considered the cost ?
Robert Angier: I'm not sure I follow... from the movie "The Prestige"
Cost is what it truly takes — the fatigue of unrehearsed recoveries, the loss of trust when systems fail silently, and the growing uncertainty each time it happens again.
Every outage leaves a mark — not just on data, but on predictability.So before asking, “What’s our uptime?”, every CTO should ask,
Lets start with our 3 pronged approach
1. Ground Zero: Where Challenges Start - What happens when our Oracle database stop servicing
The reasons on why a database fails may be many , but below are some symptoms we see at Ground Zero.
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| 1. Ground Zero: Where Challenges Start |
|-------------------------------------------------------------|
| The immediate fallout when an Oracle DB stops serving |
| |
| - Transaction rollbacks and partial commits |
| - Failed business-critical batch windows (ETL / settlements)|
| - Standby lag / replication break during peak times |
| - RMAN restore failures under time pressure |
| - Cascade failures in dependent middleware / apps |
| - Corrupt blocks or datafile errors surfacing post-patch |
| - Sudden CPU/IO spikes leading to user-visible slowdowns |
| - Cache churn and repeated hard parses |
| - Missed SLA obligations and immediate executive alerts |
| |
| >> Downtime isn't just minutes — it's a chain reaction. |
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2. Underneath Ground Zero: Finding the Real Problem
If we dig deeper we can the real issues , they are a combination technical and non technical factors.
Scroll right for the Solution (→)
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| 2. Underneath Ground Zero: Finding the Real Problem |
|-------------------------------------------------------------|
| Hidden causes that turn small incidents into costly outages |
| |
| ------------------- TECHNICAL ISSUES ---------------------- |
| - No point-in-time recovery rehearsals | Solution: Regular, automated restore & PIT tests in non-prod
| - Incomplete dependency mapping | Solution: Map app → middleware → DB chains & failure domains
| - No capacity headroom for peak loads | Solution: Capacity planning and resource reservation
| - Ineffective alerting (noise or blind spots) | Solution: Baseline metrics + anomaly detection
| - No CPU/quarterly patching cycles | Solution: Enforce regular CPU patch cadence with rollback-tested images
| - Inadequate RMAN retention / catalog drift | Solution: Audit backup catalogs and retention policies
| - Missing transaction gap reconciliation | Solution: Implement transaction gap checks and reconciliation
| - Manual, lengthy recovery playbooks | Solution: Scripted runbooks + runbook automation
| - Lack of benchmarking and performance baselines | Solution: Establish workload baselines before and after patches
| |
| ------------------ NON-TECHNICAL ISSUES ------------------- |
| - Hidden business cost of downtime (lost revenue/orders) | Solution: Quantify cost per minute and map to SLAs
| - Regulatory & compliance exposure | Solution: Define RTO/RPO aligned to compliance needs
| - No cross-team cost accountability | Solution: Introduce chargeback / cost attribution models
| - Overtime and morale impact on DB teams | Solution: Rotations, on-call fairness, burnout monitoring
| - Executive escalation loops (slow decision making) | Solution: Pre-approved emergency playbooks for exec sign-off
| - Lack of transparent incident cost reporting | Solution: Post-incident cost accounting & C-level summaries
| |
| >> The real cost is often invisible until you measure it. |
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3. Working Upwards: From Understanding to Solution
At all times, remember — before you solve a problem, you must first find it. Half the battle in Oracle operations lies in digging deep — through logs, runbooks, configurations, and even management decisions. Real progress begins when you uncover why things fail, not just how to fix them. Finding the real problem is already 50% of the solution.
Finding the real problem is already 50% of the solution.
Typical lessons from point #2
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| 3. Working Upwards: From Understanding to Solution |
|-------------------------------------------------------------|
| Steps to stop downtime from becoming a business catastrophe |
| |
| STEP 1: Quantify impact |
| - Calculate $/minute of downtime per service |
| - Build a business-impact matrix for key workloads |
| |
| STEP 2: Harden recoverability |
| - Automate full restore & PIT tests on schedule |
| - Maintain validated RMAN catalogs and retention audits |
| - Include benchmark validation post-recovery to confirm |
| performance matches pre-incident baseline |
| |
| STEP 3: Map & protect dependencies |
| - Maintain dependency catalog and failure domains |
| - Reserve capacity for critical batch / peak windows |
| |
| STEP 4: Benchmark continuously |
| - Establish workload performance baselines (IO, CPU, waits) |
| - Compare post-patch and post-failover metrics |
| - Identify degradation early through deviation thresholds |
| |
| STEP 5: Automate response |
| - Scripted runbooks + automated runbook triggers |
| - Self-heal playbooks for common failures |
| |
| STEP 6: Run realistic drills |
| - Quarterly DR switchovers and failover rehearsals |
| - Benchmark performance before and after DR tests |
| - Business continuity simulations under load |
| |
| STEP 7: Close the loop |
| - Post-incident cost accounting & RCA → SOP updates |
| - Executive dashboards with downtime KPIs (MTTR, lost $) |
| - Trend analysis comparing performance vs. previous baselines|
| |
| >> Preventing hidden costs is a cycle: benchmark → protect |
| → automate → rehearse → improve. |
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How Nabhaas helps you
If you’ve made it this far, you already sense there’s a better way — in fact, you have a way ahead.
If you’d like Nabhaas to assist in your journey, remember — TAB is just one piece. Our Managed Delivery Service ensures your Oracle operations run smoothly between patch cycles, maintaining predictability and control across your environments.
TAB - Whitepaper ,
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Managed Delivery Services - Whitepaper ,
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Stay tuned for my next post.
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