Every one of us is familiar with the pain of repetitive, mundane tasks. From regular server maintenance and cleanup to running reports and monitoring software, there are many tasks that DBAs face every day which take up too much of their time and effort.
To get around this problem, and to free up staff for more valuable tasks, many businesses today are making use of specialist tools that enable them to automate some of the more routine procedures in their organisation.
In this article, we’ll take a look at just some of the ways that automation can benefit your team:
Reducing Human Error
Humans, as a rule, aren’t great at routine repetitive work. Whether it’s due to staff getting bored and making mistakes or overlooking small but vital tasks in an attempt to save time, errors can often occur when teams need to follow a schedule of repetitive work.
Tools which enable automation are a great solution for this problem. Database monitoring and management tools enable DBAs to fully automate a wide range of mundane tasks, from maintenance jobs to monitoring and reporting. While still providing staff with complete control and oversight of the process, these tools enable a whole host of tasks to be completed automatically, making management of even very large systems much easier for small or under-resourced teams.
Many such tools can be used to automate tasks on very large systems with thousands of instances and support multiple versions and platforms too. A high degree of complexity like this and the need to use multiple separate tools to manage an entire system could lead to mistakes from staff, but an automated tool can handle it quickly with no errors.
Sticking To Schedule
When DBAs are busy and your team is working at capacity, sometimes important tasks can get pushed back or even forgotten about entirely. With the help of automation solutions, you can make sure that all of your work is completed on time and follows your predefined schedule.
Not only does this help to make sure that all of your work is completed, but it can help your IT teams to work around your organisation’s wider schedule. Scheduling like this is vital, especially for larger organisations, and can help to ensure that tasks like essential system maintenance or planned outages don’t clash with peak usage periods like product launches or busy workdays.
More Efficient DBAs
For most businesses, a DBAs time is extremely valuable and taking up that time with routine and repetitive tasks isn’t the most efficient use of your team. With the help of the automation and scheduling tools we’ve already discussed, you can ensure that your DBAs are always put to good use throughout your organisation.
With more free time allowed to them by removing the mundane reporting and maintenance tasks, DBAs can focus on more important jobs, bringing productivity benefits to your entire organisation and ensuring that vital work is tackled first to keep your company running smoothly.
Making use of database management and monitoring tools that have been designed to save your team time and effort can bring many benefits to your organisation. From the peace of mind that tasks are being handled quickly and correctly, to the efficiency savings they can bring to your DBA team, these tools are a vital part of any modern IT team.
