High Availability Guide for DB2® [Hardcover]

Chris Eaton (Author), Enzo Cialini (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0131448307 | ISBN-13: 978-0131448308 | Publication Date: May 20, 2004 | Edition: 1

This book clearly addresses all aspects of minimizing system failure. From basic backup and recovery concepts all the way up to advanced recovery tuning and configurations for High Availability and Disaster Recovery, this book has unique coverage not found elsewhere. The day-to-day responsibilities of the reader would range from architecting, planning and configuring highly available enterprise database systems to tuning and monitoring existing systems to maintain maximum availability. After reading this book, database administrators will be able to setup, tune and monitor highly available DB2 systems and have an understanding of how to choose the availability option that best meets their needs.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

IBM's definitive guide to DB2 high availability

High availability is now crucial to virtually every enterprise and e-business application. Now, there's a start-to-finish guide to delivering high availability with DB2 Universal Database for Linux, UNIX and Windows. Two of IBM's leading DB2 high availability experts thoroughly review options related to both the database engine and the underlying platform. Along the way, they address the entire lifecycle, from planning and architecture through day-to-day administration. Coverage includes:

• Fundamental concepts, real-world challenges, and tradeoffs
• Choosing among today's diverse high availability alternatives
• Configuring highly available databases
• Disk-based availability, including split mirror copies and disk-based remote mirroring
• Multi-partition issues, including instance takeover and tuning parameters
• Clustering and failover: HACMP, Sun Cluster, HP Service Guard, MSCS, and Linux Steeleye
• Monitoring and tuning databases to maximize availability
• Backup and recovery in highly available environments
• DB2's advanced availability features: standby servers, shared disk configurations, and no-data-loss recovery

If you're a DBA, your #1 priority is to keep your database running. If you're an architect, your #1 priority is building databases that can keep running. This book solves both problems.

About the Author

CHRIS EATON is an IBM Product Manager for DB2, responsible for planning and strategy for DB2's future direction. He has worked with DB2 in roles ranging from customer service analyst to development manager, and now spends much of his time working with customers in high availability environments. ENZO CIALINI is responsible for managing the DB2 UDB System Verification Test Department, with a focus on High Availability. He has authored many papers on DB2 UDB high availability configurations. Eaton and Cialini have each worked with DB2 at IBM's Toronto Laboratory for over a decade.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: IBM Press; 1 edition (May 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131448307
• ISBN-13: 978-0131448308
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,661,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good explanation of DB2 high availability features, July 9, 2006

By 

Paul Turpin (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Availability Guide for DB2® (Hardcover)

Having seen Chris talk at several IDUG events, I knew he had a deep knowledge of DB2 and its high availability features. This book highlights that knowledge.

The section on logging is the clearest explanation of DB2 logging that I have seen anywhere. I found it especially useful that the parameters that affect logging are covered in detail. His chapter, "Minimizing Unplanned Outages" is full of good information about increasing data availability during required maintenance. His detail regarding online schema changes is quite helpful.

The chapter on setting up standby database gives much good detail about the various techniques. Sample scripts are included in the chapter to make the DBAs good easier. The chapter on HACMP is very helpful for a DBA trying to understand how HACMP works.

My only disappointment with the book is that it came out too early to cover HADR. Having a section on HADR would have made the book complete.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lot more to dB2 than just standard SQL, June 10, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: High Availability Guide for DB2® (Hardcover)

If you have been a sysadmin and are familiar with the concepts of full and incremental backups of an operating system, then this book's descriptions of dB2's abilities in this field are very impressive. dB2 offers far more fine grained control/resolution over the backing up of its data. Like the means of having circular or archival logging. So if you are just starting out as a dB2 administrator, you have quite a bit more to learn, just in this field.

On a tangential note: Suppose you have your own non-database application, with its own native data file format, and you want to regularly save its activities. Try looking at the ideas in this book for how dB2 does its duties. You might be able to abstract out the ideas and reinstantiate them in your context. The book presents the right level of discussion for this. One caveat is that IBM has a portfolio of patents around dB2, and I do not know the extent that you might be able to implement some of the book's ideas without infringing on the patents.

Of course, there is far more to dB2 than backups. The book goes into other topics. Like how to define and run a standby database, by sending log files to it in a systematic fashion. Or, how to make a "split mirror" warm standby.

My overall impression is that IBM has engineered a vast amount of backup and availability into dB2, to handle almost any level of transaction load. There is a lot more to dB2 than just being able to handle standard SQL.