[77] in Athena_Backup_System
meeting minutes 2/9/95
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Diane Delgado)
Fri Feb 10 10:55:26 1995
To: athena-backup@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 10:55:08 EST
From: Diane Delgado <delgado@MIT.EDU>
Here's the summary of Thurday's meeting. Jonathon and Dave, please
feel free to correct any mistakes. (It's long, but we did talk
about many important issues).)
attendees: Jonathon, Dave, Diane
- The Tape format for the ABS was discussed. Dave presented
some interesting factiods regarding tapes and eof markers.
The result is we need to try out a few things to determine
what the features are for the drives we are using, and then
modify the proposed tape format, if necessary.
-We began discussing the operational requirements for the
ASD Database Services support.
- 7x24 support from ASD DS is a requirement from DCNS operations.
There were no objections to this.
- The recovery time after any database failure should be limited
to 4 hours. This is also a DCNS operations requirement.
There were no objections to this.
- The allowable downtime for the ABS database was discussed.
We felt that we could allow some downtime on a weekly basis.
No one was certain whether daily downtime was allowable.
We also do not yet have a clear idea of what is the maximum
allowable downtime per day or per week.
- Jeff requies that the Database Backups be in ascii format.
We will investigate Dave's idea of performing a binary
dump of the database, and then generating an ascii dump
from that binary dump. This has a few advatages:
(a) binary dumps are much faster, thus reducing the time
the backup interferes with the regular DB activity.
(b) staff can use the binary backup for disaster recovery
(which is faster) and revert only to the ascii if using the
binary dump fails. We need to look into performance issues
to ensure that this extra step does not place an excessive load
on the DB machine.
- The issue of who should have DBA access was discussed.
(This issue is not yet fully resolved.) Jeff requires that
operations have full DBA access to the Oracle Database; such
DBA access would be restricted to only those staff who currently
have DBA access to the Moira Database. Jeff is against requiring
that those who have access recieve proper training before access
is granted.
Within the team there are varying levels of agreement with this
proposal and some concerns:
- the cost of the service agreement with ASD DS might be more
expensive since they would have to account for possibly having
extra work due to having persons without the proper training
accessing the database components and also that changes may
be made without their knowledge which could adversly affect
system behavior.
-Who did it? With more people having access, how to ensure
accountability for actions must be considered.
-With people in different IS groups managing the database
how do we ensure everyone properly communicates any
changes which are made to everyone who needs to know.
This is essential in quick problem resolution.
-The fact that DCNS has demonstated that it does not have
the skill set to perform DBMS management raises the question
of why anyone in DCNS should have full privileges, especially
without proper training.
Everyone was in agreement that at least read-only access to the DB
along with shutdown and startup privileges was acceptable.
The issue of privileges beyond this is still unresolved.
It was also more or less agreed that if we went the route of
requiring DBA training to get the DBA privilege, that something
on the order of a 2-day course would be acceptable.
-(can't remeber if we covered this, but I'll add it so that it's
written somethere)
Jeff wants to ensure that ADS DS gives our Database equal priority
with the other databases they are managing. We need to address
his concern that during a major disruption in service, wherein
multiple databases are requiring service, that ours is not left
until last. The message here is that the ABS is a very important
service to us, and can become critical during disaster recovery.
In the event of a disaster, we need to have it available as
soon as possible.
