This post is part of a series of posts, mostly authored by my colleague German Viscuso who is the Director of Community for Autonomous Database. German has published three posts on observability and management services for Autonomous Database Dedicated. My series of posts on this blog cover the serverless-specific aspects of German’s posts. For reference, German’s posts are here:
- https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/adb-d-observability-for-mission-critical-workloads
- https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/autonomous-database-observability-1
- https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/autonomous-database-observability-2
Observing and managing Autonomous Database
Autonomous Database (ADB) is a fully managed cloud database service. It uses automated best practices for tuning, security, backups, updates, and other routine operational and management tasks.
Although Autonomous Database is a highly automated service, it does provide cloud and fleet administrators with oversight of operational information, the ability to drill down into issues for further analysis, and the ability to resolve specific types of workload issues.
Observability and management personas
From discussions with various customers, my view is that there are typically three key personas involved in this area:
- Single instance
- Cloud Administrator – uses cloud console pages and cloud APIs
- Database Engineers (DBEs) – uses built-in Database Actions console
- Multiple instances
- Fleet Administrator – uses cloud console pages and cloud APIs
In some cases, a single person wears all or some of these hats at different points in time. Customers with large deployments assign different individuals to each persona.
What tools-services are available to manage and observe Autonomous Databases?
Every Autonomous Database comes with a built-in set of services that provide information about how the resources are being used. Some tools require OCI cloud credentials, some require database credentials, and others require their own app-specific credentials.
| Required Account Type |
Focus Areas |
Tool-Service |
| Cloud credentials |
Individual ADB instances Fleet management |
OCI ADB Console metrics |
| Database credentials |
Fleet management |
Database Actions – Database Dashboard |
| Tool specific credentials |
Fleet management | Enterprise Manager 13c |
In the next set of posts, I will focus on observability and monitoring tools and services for a single ADB instance and then on observability and monitoring tools and services for a fleet of ADB instances. Each post will explain how to perform specific tasks using the tools mentioned above, see here:
- Part 2 – focusing on observability and monitoring of a single ADB instance
- Part 3 – focusing on observability and monitoring a fleet of ADB instances