In data management, Oracle is leading a major role and also now become a pioneer in the most important space of autonomous capabilities. Over 20 years, Oracle has been automating the core capabilities within the database technology from memory management to automatic indexes. Oracle Autonomous Database with built-in machine learning represents one of the most important advancements in the database’s history. It offers high performance, reliability, security, and also better operational efficiency to the users for the core data management tasks.
At a recent webinar held by DBTA with Dain Hansen, Oracle Cloud platform vice president, PaaS and IaaS, Oracle, and Maria Colgan, master product manager Oracle, who has discussed the top 10 capabilities that make Oracle’s Autonomous Database truly autonomous.
The top 10 capabilities are as follows:
- Auto-provisioning: Automatically deploys mission-critical databases (RAC on Excavate infrastructure) which are fault-tolerant and highly available. It enables seamless scale-out, protection over server failure, and allows regular updates in a rolling fashion, while apps continue to run.
- Auto-indexing: Automatically monitors workload and detects missing indexes that could accelerate applications. Before implementing the index, it validates each to ensure its benefit, and also learn from its own mistakes by using machine learning.
- Auto-configuration: Automatically configures the database to optimize for -Configuration 5 specific workloads. To improve the overall performance, everything from the memory configuration, access structures, and the data formats are optimized. It allows customers to simply load data and go.
- Auto-scaling: Automatically scales compute resources when needed by workload. All scaling occurs online, while the application continuously runs. It enables true pay per use.
- Automated data protection: Automatically protect sensitive and regulated data in the database, all through a unified management console. Assess the security of your configuration, sensitive data, users, and unusual database activities.
- Automated security: Automatic security offered by encrypting the entire database, backups, and all network connections. Prevents phishing attacks by not giving any access to OS or admin privileges. Protects the system from both cloud operations and any malicious internal users.
- Auto-backups: Automatic daily backup of database or on-demand. Restore or recover a database to any point-in-time you specify in the last 60 days.
- Auto-patching: Automatically patch or upgrade with zero downtime. Applications continue to run as patching occurs automatically in a round-robin fashion across RAC nodes or servers.
- Automated detection and resolution: Automatically detect hardware failures by using pattern recognition, without long timeouts. To avoid database hangs, IOs are immediately redirected around unhealthy devices. Generates service requests automatically if any deviation occurs by continuous monitoring of each database.
- Automatic failover (coming soon): Automatic failover with a zero-data loss to standby. To end-user applications, it is completely transparent. It provides 99.995% SLA.
“Hansen and Colgan said that Oracle Autonomous Database is the first autonomous database in the industry. It’s self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing. Autonomy hides complexity, eliminates errors, lower costs.”
The platform can quickly deploy a mission-critical database, can be optimized for workloads, and creates indexes and continuously monitors. It can also offer instant elasticity by scaling compute and storage completely independently, while users can take advantage of a “pay as you go” plan. They also explained security is paramount. The platform is automatically secured by default and it’s always up-to-date with timely patches by use of this.
