Strengthening database operations

Kevin Kline at SolarWinds outlines the top six benefits of database DevOps for streamlined and stronger database operations

 

“By 2025, smart workflows and seamless interactions among humans and machines will likely be as standard as the corporate balance sheet, and most employees will use data to optimise nearly every aspect of their work.”

 

That’s the opening line from a report by McKinsey — The data-driven enterprise of 2025 — which seeks to understand what it means to be “data-driven”. 

 

The report argues organisations have, in the past, tended to apply data-driven approaches ‘sporadically” but this is changing with nearly all employees ‘naturally and regularly leverage data to support their work’.

 

It’s a thought-provoking analysis and one warranting further scrutiny. After all, data is the cornerstone of the modern digital business. It’s used by everyone — from IT teams and database professionals to business leaders and beyond  — to make informed decisions, increase efficiency, and stay ahead of business objectives.

 

The snag is harnessing the power of data is easier said than done. Whether it’s caused by organisational digital transformation, cloud migration, or hybrid working, today’s IT environments have become increasingly complex. Company data now lives in — and is accessed through —  multiple pathways including on-premises, plus public and private clouds. 

 

It’s a situation only made more challenging when organisations support multiple application architectures, such as client-server applications, container-based applications, and microservices architectures.

 

It’s also fair to say organisations manage different types of data using different database types be they unstructured, semi-structured — or structured data stored in relational, non-relational, and other databases. Whatever the approach, the outcome is the same. It makes building efficient and highly scalable applications and databases harder.

 

That’s why businesses often need help understanding how to address issues related to databases effectively. Or to put it another way, it doesn’t take much for the wealth of data available to a business to quickly become a millstone if badly managed, inadequately secured, and poorly governed. 

 

When this happens, instead of data delivering benefits by addressing issues such as problem resolution times, increasing cost-efficiency, and improving end-user and customer experience, it can cause headaches and open the business to the risk of breach or abuse.

 

Arguably, it’s a situation made worse by the complex nature of the data within a business or organisation. As a result, it means they often struggle to bring data into their DevOps framework. 

 

This is a problem because incorporating database management into DevOps practices can help ensure data and applications run efficiently. At the same time, it can help organisations avoid downtime, reduce deployment rollbacks, and eliminate system crashes due to database performance issues.

 

Unfortunately, many businesses overlook this framework due to the complex nature of managing data.  The challenge — as with all the various types of data stored in different locations — begins with businesses needing more visibility into issues related to their databases. 

 

In other words, companies need to see inside the database’s so-called ‘black box’. Why? Because it allows them to better integrate data, database schemas, and stored procedure code into their DevOps practices. If it can be done, it allows businesses to streamline database development and administration through Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), enhance security, and reduce the possibility of downtime and system crashes.

 

One approach to solving this problem is employing database observability solutions act as an ‘x-ray machine’ for database systems. Taking this under-the-hood look inside enables IT teams to understand the root cause of issues, resolve problems faster, and proactively optimise poor performance to help prevent future issues. 

 

And there’s another benefit too. It also makes incorporating the database into the DevOps framework much easier. But it’s not the only one. 

 

Here are six of the top benefits organisations can realise through this framework:

 

1. Streamlined deployment and software delivery 

Organisations can integrate database development and operations to enable a streamlined and automated approach to software delivery. As a result, this allows the team to more easily meet the needs of the business through faster deployment cycles and delivery of new features and updates.

 

2. Increased collaboration across teams

By bringing together developers, operations teams, and database administrators, businesses can encourage collaboration and communication across different departments. This can lead to a better alignment of goals, an improved understanding of requirements, and more efficient problem-solving.

 

3. Improved agility and flexibility 

Organisations need to respond rapidly to evolving business needs and market demands —  no matter where they are in their digital transformation. By automating database provisioning, configuration, and deployment as they do with their application code, teams can more easily scale their infrastructure, roll out new features, and adapt to the evolving needs of the business.

 

4. Reduced risk and downtime 

By automating and standardising database deployments using CI/CD, businesses can minimise the risk of human errors and reduce the potential for downtime. Database DevOps practices can help ensure changes are thoroughly tested and validated before being deployed. If done correctly, it can reduce the chances of data loss or service disruptions. And if deployment of new database code goes wrong, CI/CD can make it quicker and easier to roll back to the last good version.

 

5. Efficient database management 

Implementing DevOps provides organisations with a structured approach to managing databases. Any database changes through version control — which guards against any ‘uncontrolled’ changes to the code, structure, or configuration of a database — also provides enhanced change tracking and easier rollback mechanisms, helping to ensure changes can be managed efficiently and safely.

 

6. Improved compliance and security

Database DevOps emphasises the inclusion of security and compliance measures throughout the development lifecycle. By integrating security controls and best practices, organisations can factor in data protection, privacy, and regulatory compliance requirements earlier in the process.

 

By adopting a database DevOps approach, organisations can also help ensure their database infrastructure realises the same benefits as other teams using DevOps. This includes gaining the ability to comprehensively analyse the performance of their data and effectively address critical business challenges.

 

With data playing such an important role, businesses must implement a powerful database observability solution alongside database DevOps. By doing so, they gain visibility and performance insight while simplifying the management and lifecycle of even the most complex databases. 

 

Those organisations successfully leveraging database observability and a DevOps framework together are best placed to cater to the complex needs of their diverse and growing business.  And in an increasingly data-driven world, this is not just a necessity, it’s a must. 

 

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Kevin Kline is a database technology evangelist at SolarWinds 

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com