Comments on: The Art of Being a Successful DBA – Good Documentation is Essential http://www.remotedbaexperts.com/Blog/2009/07/the-non-technical-art-of-being-a-successful-dba-%e2%80%93-good-documentation-is-essential/ Remote DBA Experts Blog Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:39:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Marko Sutic http://www.remotedbaexperts.com/Blog/2009/07/the-non-technical-art-of-being-a-successful-dba-%e2%80%93-good-documentation-is-essential/comment-page-1/#comment-150 Marko Sutic Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:04:20 +0000 http://www.remotedbaexperts.com/Blog/?p=84#comment-150 Hi Chris, great blog post! I'm huge fan of documentation because I tend to forget various things occasionally and then documentation comes as life saviour :) I document every activity - from maintenance tasks, troubleshooting actions, backup/recovery scenarios, various configurations, etc... Now I'm in process of creating templates to ease myself documenting process. It is very hard to find examples of "DBA templates" on web so I'll have to create them from scratch based on my documents. Again, great blog post ;) Regards, Marko Hi Chris,

great blog post!

I’m huge fan of documentation because I tend to forget various things occasionally and then documentation comes as life saviour :)

I document every activity – from maintenance tasks, troubleshooting actions, backup/recovery scenarios, various configurations, etc…

Now I’m in process of creating templates to ease myself documenting process. It is very hard to find examples of “DBA templates” on web so I’ll have to create them from scratch based on my documents.

Again, great blog post ;)

Regards,
Marko

]]> By: Fahd Mirza http://www.remotedbaexperts.com/Blog/2009/07/the-non-technical-art-of-being-a-successful-dba-%e2%80%93-good-documentation-is-essential/comment-page-1/#comment-62 Fahd Mirza Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:18:05 +0000 http://www.remotedbaexperts.com/Blog/?p=84#comment-62 I introduced the concept of "Server Packs" 4 years ago in my company, when we had just 3 databases on 2 machines. Server Pack was a plastic envelope containing: 1- OS software CDs (installer and patches, keys etc) 2 DB software CDs (installer and patches etc) 3- Emergency Boot Disks 4- Critical Users and Passwords 5- Documentation of Server (Most of the info you mentioned) 6- Type, retention and Location of Backups 7- DBA Contact Info 8- List of Common Tasks 9- Steps to shutdown and startup the server and databases. Now we have 30 plus machines running Oracle RAC, Fusion middle ware components, 10g Application Server, single instance 10g DB, couple of web servers, DR site, and some legacy servers and everyone of them has server pack. It's a holy thing and unlike other holy things, server packs are updated regularly and that's a must. PS. Can you please share the daily, weekly and monthly Oracle database checklist please? I introduced the concept of “Server Packs” 4 years ago in my company, when we had just 3 databases on 2 machines.

Server Pack was a plastic envelope containing:

1- OS software CDs (installer and patches, keys etc)
2 DB software CDs (installer and patches etc)
3- Emergency Boot Disks
4- Critical Users and Passwords
5- Documentation of Server (Most of the info you mentioned)
6- Type, retention and Location of Backups
7- DBA Contact Info
8- List of Common Tasks
9- Steps to shutdown and startup the server and databases.

Now we have 30 plus machines running Oracle RAC, Fusion middle ware components, 10g Application Server, single instance 10g DB, couple of web servers, DR site, and some legacy servers and everyone of them has server pack. It’s a holy thing and unlike other holy things, server packs are updated regularly and that’s a must.

PS. Can you please share the daily, weekly and monthly Oracle database checklist please?

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