Introduction
Regular patching and maintenance of your cloud databases is crucial for maintaining robust security and optimal performance. By promptly applying patches, you address known vulnerabilities, fix software bugs, and enhance system stability. This proactive approach significantly reduces the risk of data breaches, and service disruptions, ensuring your data remains secure and your operations run smoothly. Additionally, regular patching helps you stay compliant with industry regulations and standards, safeguarding your organization from potential fines and reputational damage. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to schedule and get notified on your maintenance operations for HeatWave MySQL in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Overview
HeatWave service undergoes regular maintenance to address security and reliability issues. During these maintenance windows, updates related to hardware, the underlying operating system, or the database minor version are applied. Some of these operations, such as operating system updates and database patching, may result in downtime for your DB System. To reduce the impact of such downtime during maintenance, consider enabling High Availability DB Systems. Developers can deliver modern, cloud native database applications with immediate access to the latest features from the MySQL team. MySQL security patches are automatically applied to limit exposure to security vulnerabilities.
Configuring Maintenance
The maintenance is performed monthly, and you have a few options to define the time and day to carry out the essential maintenance on your MySQL DB System:
Create a MySQL DB System:
Use the console or command-line interface to create a new MySQL DB System. During the creation process, you can specify maintenance windows for regular updates and patches.
Edit an Existing DB System:
If you already have a MySQL DB System, you can modify its maintenance schedule. Adjust the time and day for maintenance operations to minimize impact on your workload.
Restore an Existing DB System to a New DB System:
If you need to migrate or clone your existing database, consider restoring it to a new DB System. During this process, you can set up a fresh maintenance window for the new system.
Remember to choose a maintenance window that aligns with your business needs and minimizes disruption to your users. Properly scheduled maintenance ensures the health and reliability of your MySQL DB System.
Note: If you do not specify a day and time, Oracle chooses it for you.
The maintenance operation starts within minutes of the Maintenance window start time that you define for the DB system.
Get notifications for maintenance operations
OCI Announcement subscriptions are a valuable way to stay informed about operational announcements related to HeatWave MySQL. By subscribing, you’ll receive personalized notifications efficiently. Here’s how it works:
Stay Informed:
- Subscribe to OCI announcements related to HeatWave MySQL.
- Receive timely updates about new features, enhancements, maintenance, and other important information.
Efficient Communication:
- Instead of manually checking for updates, let the announcements come to you.
- Customize your subscription preferences to receive notifications via email, SMS, or other channels.
Personalization:
- Tailor your subscription to your specific interests and needs.
- Choose the topics you want to be notified about, ensuring relevant information reaches you.
The set of capabilities includes the Announcement dashboard, Announcement subscriptions, and filter groups for to create a personalized announcement experience. The Announcement service, combined with Notifications service can deliver the announcements not only to the Oracle Cloud Console and email, but to a wide variety of channels supported by the Oracle Notifications service.
Configuration steps
Step1: Under the navigation menu, select Governance & Administration → Account Management → Announcements
Step 2: From the Announcements section, click on Subscriptions
Under List scope, click Compartment, and then choose a compartment that you have permission to work in. The page updates to display only the resources in that compartment. If you’re not sure which compartment to use, contact an administrator. If there are active subscriptions, they will be listed here.
Step 3: Create a new announcement subscription flow by clicking on the Create announcement subscription button
- Under Name, enter a name for the subscription and then enter an optional description.
- Click Compartment, and then select the compartment where you want to create the subscription.
- Under Subscription type, do one of the following:
To publish only the announcements that meet the filter criteria that you specify i.e. in our case HeatWave, click Selected announcements only. Then, continue to the next step to configure a filter group and its filters for HeatWave.
Now, configure a filter group with the filters that you want to apply to announcements for this subscription. Under Filter group, click Filter group name, and then enter a name for the filter.
Under Filters, click Type, and then select Service
Under Value, Select the name of the service (HeatWave) that you want to include. To narrow the list, you can type HeatWave and then select Both Oracle Cloud Infrastructure HeatWave and Oracle HeatWave
When you create a subscription based on a service, you get all the announcements for that service. You don’t need to separately create a subscription for each region where you use the service.
Under Display preferences, click Time zone, and then choose the time zone that you prefer for announcement time stamps.
Under Notifications topic, you have the following options:
- Use an existing Notifications topic by clicking Use existing topic, and then choose a topic from the currently selected compartment.
- Create a new Notifications topic, by clicking Create new topic, and then provide the following: Name, Description, and subscription protocol
Finally, when you’re ready, click Create
Step 4: Activate the new subscription
Notifications creates the email subscription and sends a confirmation URL to the email address. The subscription is pending until confirmation is received. To activate the new subscription, navigate to the confirmation URL that was sent to the email address.
Summary
Console announcements communicate timely, important information about service status. This feature is very powerful that it offers the ability to deliver filtered announcements to different user groups as defined by the tenancy administrator. The integration of the Notification service allows you to define automated workflows, which can be triggered based on the announcement details including announcement type, region, service, and compartment.
Remember to manage your subscription preferences to receive announcements that matter most to you. Stay informed and make the most of HeatWave!