Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration From Novice to Professional

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CHAPTER 15 THE BIG PICTURE AND THE TEN DELIVERABLES
Service Level Management
Service Level Management (SLM) is “the Process responsible for negotiating Service Level
Agreements, and ensuring that these are met. SLM is responsible for ensuring that all IT
Service Management Processes, Operational Level Agreements, and Underpinning Contracts
are appropriate for the agreed Service Level Targets. SLM monitors and reports on
Service Levels, and holds regular Customer reviews.”
The database administrator cannot meet the expectations of the business if he or
she does not know what they are. These expectations usually center on availability and
performance; for example, databases that are used by e- commerce applications typically
have very high availability and performance requirements.
In the absence of clearly communicated expectations and measurable service levels,
the job of database administration becomes a reactive exercise instead of the proactive
exercise it should be—for example, performance tuning is conducted only after the business
complains of poor performance.
Financial Management
Financial Management for IT Services is “the Process responsible for managing an IT
Service Provider’s Budgeting, Accounting and Charging requirements.”
Oracle license payments can be a substantial part of the IT department’s budget. At
the time of writing, a license for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition for a single CPU costs
$47,500 or more and depends on the number of cores in the CPU; a license for a 4- core
Intel CPU costs $95,000. Many features such as partitioning are extra- cost options. Annual
support costs are currently 22% of the base price, and development and “standby” databases
must also be separately licensed.
Database administrators should understand Oracle’s licensing policies and maintain
an accurate inventory of installed software. Note that Oracle does not use “license
keys” to unlock software and it is therefore easy to install inadvertently software that is
not properly licensed, such as Enterprise Edition instead of Standard Edition. It should
be particularly noted that many features are automatically installed as part of the installation
process and cannot be deinstalled. Examples include Partitioning and the various
Management Packs. Collector Jobs for Diagnostics Pack are automatically created and
scheduled even though very few sites are licensed to use the feature. As described in
Chapter 6, the database administrator must take explicit steps to deactivate the Management
Packs after the database is created.
Tip The view shows which Oracle features are being used. This
information should be regularly reviewed to ensure that unlicensed features are not being inadvertently used.