•Availability is the Holy Grail of database administrators.
•If the data is no available, the application cannot run.
•If the applications cannot run, the company is losing business.
•Therefore, the DBA is responsible for doing everything in his or her power to ensure that databases are kept online and operational.
•However, the need for availability is increasing.
•Coupling businesses to the Internet is dramatically altering the way we do business. It has created expectations for businesses to be more connected, more flexible, and importantly, more available.
E-business
The age of the long batch window
•When you integrate the web with database management, heightened expectations are placed on DBAs to keep database up and running more smoothly and for longer periods
•When your business is online, it never closes. People expect full functionality on Web sites they visit regardless of the time of the day.
•Therefore, an e-business must be available and operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
•E-business downtime also damages the goodwill and public image of your organization. And once that is lost, it is quite hard to rebuild the trust of your customer and your company’s public image.