Managed Applications: Oracle Database

Service Guide

Updated: October 19, 2017

Overview

Database Server Software 1.0 is a Managed Hosting product. The standard “Service” consists of the licensing, installation, configuration, administration, monitoring, maintenance and support for software components.

Customer chooses the Database type, edition, version and options at the time of purchase.

Licensing

Licensing of the Database Software can either be provided by CenturyLink or obtained by Customer.

If provided by CenturyLink, CenturyLink will, as part of the Service, obtain and maintain the required Software licenses under the Software Vendors Use Rights and License Agreement. All users of the Service are subject to the terms and conditions of the referenced license agreements.

If provided by Customer, Customer may obtain, and maintain throughout the Service Term, the required Software licenses. If Customer chooses to obtain the licenses, CenturyLink will install the Software as part of the Service provided Customer secures and grants the applicable accesses to CenturyLink to allow CenturyLink to perform the Service. Customer shall at all times comply with any and all end user license agreements related to the Software. Customer represents and warrants that a written license agreement exists with the License vendor that permits CenturyLink to perform activities described in the proceeding sections. Customer agrees to provide CenturyLink with evidence of licensing as requested prior to the deployment date and periodically as requested to update the status of the license. If Customer fails to provide the license agreement, CenturyLink may, at its option, delay the deployment date or terminate the Agreement.

Third Party Software Terms

If any third party software, including any corresponding documentation, is provided to Customer by CenturyLink in connection with the Service, Customer agrees to be bound by any additional licensing terms and conditions applicable to such third party software and that it will use such third party software strictly in accordance with such terms and conditions. CenturyLink makes no representations or warranties whatsoever with regard to such third party software.

Indemnification

Except as otherwise provided by mandatory applicable law without possibility of contractual waiver and notwithstanding anything in the Master Service Agreement or elsewhere, CenturyLink and its affiliated companies shall not be liable to Customer or indemnify Customer for any claims of infringement of patent, copyright or other intellectual property right related to third-party software components.

Service Level Agreement

The Service Level Agreement (SLA) associated with this Service Guide is the Managed Hosting Services SLA.

CenturyLink SLA applies to all vendor supported configurations. Any configuration or version identified as “unsupported” by vendor will be subject to reasonable effort support by CenturyLink and will not be subject to SLA Service Credits.

Security

CenturyLink utilizes CIS Level 1 security benchmarks and NIST for additional security standards when deploying Managed Database Services and will provide security policies for Managed Database Services to Customer upon request.

Monitoring

CenturyLink will enable application level monitoring for each environment as they are created within the product configuration.

CenturyLink will retain primary notification and resolution responsibilities for all automated environment alerts. A Customer technical contact will be engaged to perform primary resolution of incidents associated with a non-production level environment.

Maintenance and Support

Change Management:

All changes to the CenturyLink managed applications, systems, network and facilities are subject to CenturyLink’s change management process. This process is intended to confirm that work is reviewed for completeness (risk assessment, completed test procedure, metrics for measuring progress, back out procedure, etc.) and accuracy prior to scheduling and implementation.

Major and Minor Releases:

Major and Minor Releases require a new installation of the Software binaries, which is not included in this Service. CenturyLink suggests that Customer purchase a new managed server (via a Service Order) and migrate data (defined in a SOW) as a commercially reasonable practice.

Maintenance Windows:

All times listed under Scheduled Maintenance Windows are local times and subject to change. CenturyLink will use commercially reasonable efforts to perform routine maintenance only during the Saturday or Sunday defined maintenance windows. See Maintenance Windows page for details.

Support:

CenturyLink will provide support for the Service during installation, content migration, Customer validation, and 24x7 monitoring and management by the CenturyLink Service Center after installation.

Customer Contact:

Customer will designate and maintain a Customer Contact during the Service Term (including current contact information). “Customer Contact” means a technical point of contact available 24x7 with sufficient knowledge, authority and access to address configuration issues, event notifications, system or infrastructure modifications and authentication of applicable CenturyLink systems.

Supported Editions, Versions, Platforms and Operating Systems

See Managed Database Compatibility Matrix

Additional Licensing Terms

If Customer-provided licensing, Customer must provide CenturyLink with the Oracle Customer Support Identifier (CSI) number that CenturyLink will add to CenturyLink’s Oracle Metalink accounts for Oracle to provide product support.

Access

Customer will be provided login access and access to Oracle directories but not root or sudo access. In the event Customer requires root or sudo access, CenturyLink may grant such access; however, the SLA will not apply to the Service for the period of time that root or sudo access is granted.

Patch Releases

CenturyLink certifies, approves, bundles and delivers Oracle Database Security Patch Updates (SPU) and Critical Patch Updates (CPU) for installation in a Customer environment. Customer must approve the installation. Any Outages directly caused by Customer's failure to accept the implementation of a patch will not be subject to SLA Service Credits.

Additional Services

Real Application Clusters

For active-active clustering requirements, RAC is an option to Oracle Database Enterprise Edition and included with Oracle Database Standard Edition. RAC supports the deployment of a single database across a cluster of servers that provides unbeatable fault tolerance, performance and scalability with no application changes necessary.

Partitioning

Partitioning is used to split tables across multiple locations. Oracle Database partitioning is normally done for manageability, performance or availability reasons. This increases performance for sites that have regular transactions involving certain views of data, while maintaining availability and security.

Multitenant

Multitenant is an option with Oracle Database Enterprise Edition that enables customer to easily consolidate multiple databases without changing their applications by delivering all the benefits of managing many databases as one, yet retains the isolation and resource prioritization of separate databases. Multitenant enables rapid provisioning and upgrades, and fully complements other options including Oracle Real Application Clusters and Active Data Guard.

A multitenant container database (CDB) can have one or many pluggable databases (PDB).

Transparent Data Encryption (TDE)

The Transparent Data Encryption feature is part of the Advanced Security Option. Transparent Data Encryption enables simple and easy encryption for sensitive data in columns without requiring users or applications to manage the encryption key. Transparent Data Encryption only protects data at rest or in a backup set.

Other features of Advanced Security Option are available through a Statement of Work (SOW).

Data Guard – Basic & Active

Basic Data Guard provides the management, monitoring, and automation software to create and maintain one or more synchronized copies of a production database to protect Oracle data from failures, disasters, human error, and data corruptions while providing high availability for mission critical applications. Basic Data Guard is included with Oracle Database Standard Edition.

Active Data Guard is a licensed option for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Active Data Guard enables advanced capabilities that that extend Basic Data Guard functionality, such as Real Time Query, automatic block repair, Far Sync, Standby Block Change Tracking and more. (SOW required.)

Diagnostic Pack & Tuning Pack

The Diagnostic and Tuning Packs are licensed options providing improved and more effective access to diagnostic as well as tuning information available in the database.

Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM)

Customers may elect to use a tool called Oracle Enterprise Monitor. This tool is a virtual DBA assistant that can help the Customer manage more Oracle Database servers, tune those servers as well as fix problems that arise. (SOW required.)

Advanced Compression

Oracle Advanced Compression provides comprehensive data compression and Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) capabilities for all types of data: structured/unstructured, backup, network, archive, and Data Guard Redo Transport traffic. To facilitate automated ILM, Heat Map and Automatic Data Optimization enable organizations to maintain system-generated data usage statistics, at the row and segment levels, and to set policies that implement data compression/movement automatically. (SOW required.)

Database In-Memory

Oracle Database In-Memory allows any existing Oracle Database-compatible application to automatically and transparently take advantage of columnar in-memory processing, without additional programming or application changes. (SOW required.)

Database Vault

The Oracle Database Vault option proactively protects application data from being accessed by privileged database users. Oracle Database Vault can also help discover Oracle Database runtime privileges without disruption. (SOW required.)

Label Security

Oracle Label Security provides sophisticated and flexible security based on row labels for fine-grained access control. This option employs labeling concepts used by government, defense, and commercial organizations to protect sensitive information and provide data separation. (SOW required.)

Real Application Testing (RAT)

Oracle Real Application Testing comprises a suite of features that help protect database applications from undesirable impact of routine changes such as hardware/software upgrades, configuration changes, platform migrations, and so forth. These features enable comprehensive testing of real-world applications so that any issues resulting from system changes are fully identified and addressed during testing, and unexpected problems encountered when a change is finally made in the production systems are minimized. (SOW required.)

Oracle GoldenGate

Oracle GoldenGate enables the exchange and manipulation of data at the transaction level among multiple, heterogeneous platforms across the enterprise. It moves committed transactions with transaction integrity and minimal overhead on an existing infrastructure. Its modular architecture provides the flexibility to extract and replicate selected data records, transactional changes, and changes to DDL (data definition language) across a variety of topologies. (SOW required.)

Quest SharePlex

Shareplex provides high-speed, log-based replication between Oracle instances on Sun Solaris, IBM-AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows platforms and supports replication between dissimilar platforms. (SOW required.)

Veritas NetBackup

When purchased by Customer, the Veritas NetBackup tape backup system provides daily incremental file system backups with weekly full backups. Incremental (files that have changed since the previous backup) and full backups are saved for 28 days; afterwards the files are over-written with new files.

Dedicated Database Administrator

Customers that do not have a Database Administrator (DBA), can purchase additional services through CenturyLink. These services can be initiated through a one-time service request to the CenturyLink Operations Center or they can be scheduled in advance based on predictable requirements. (SOW required.)

Tasks performed on behalf of the customer include:

Licensing

  • Maintain licensing and Software maintenance with Oracle for CenturyLink provided licenses

Installation

  • Prepare server for application service (OS specific parameters)
  • Configure Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) for Oracle Database Server installation, if purchased
  • Install Oracle Database Server
  • Install Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM), Data Guard, GoldenGate or SharePlex, and any available Oracle Options and features, if purchased
  • Install applicable Oracle Database Server security patch Updates (SPU) or Critical Patch Update (CPU) with customer approval
  • Harden Oracle Database Server to CIS level 1 and CenturyLink standards
  • Install CenturyLink Monitoring
  • Perform quality assurance against Oracle Server installation/hardening

Configuration

  • Create/Configure Oracle Database Server service accounts
  • Configure TNS supported protocols (TCP/IP, TCP Port, IP Address and ASO options)
  • Configure Oracle RAC or SharePlex replication, if purchased
  • Configure login auditing
  • Configure Oracle DataGuard Basic Standby asynchronous archive log shipping
  • Configure database encryption using TDE within ASO, if purchased
  • Configure CenturyLink Monitoring
  • Install and configure CenturyLink Disk/Tape Backups, if purchased

Administration

  • SYSDBA user management
  • Rebuild broken DataGuard Basic Standby asynchronous archive log shipping or RAC nodes
  • Perform database backups and restores
  • Oracle database log monitoring
  • Restart/stop/start services
  • Update managed servers with all recommended Oracle Database Server Security Patch Updates (SPU) or Critical Patch Update (CPU) upon customer request

Maintenance and Support

  • Coordinate patching with Customer during maintenance hours
  • Perform incident related failover/failback or switchover of DataGuard, Basic Standby asynchronous archive log shipping or RAC nodes

Monitors

Monitor

Description

Oracle process Checks that the Oracle processes are running.
Oracle process limit Checks to see if the number of processes is reaching the configured maximum.
TNS listener Checks the Oracle listener is running.
Database status Checks that the database instance is available for use.
Database long lock Database lock is blocking another session for a long time.
Database jobs Checks the database job queue for failures.
Oracle alert log Monitors the Oracle alert log for errors or any other strings that may be important.
Oracle archive destination Checks the status of the archive destinations. Important for standby/Data Guard configurations that use remote log shipping as it gives an early indication of issues in the redo stream transmission.
Archive check Checks the amount of archive log that has been generated in the last hour and day. Trap and reset conditions are specified in Megabytes.
Data file status Detects any data files that are not online.
Unrecoverable file Checks for unrecoverable/ no logging operations being performed against a data file.
Redo status Checks the status of redo logs.
Copy redo latch Monitors for contention of the redo copy latch since startup.
Redo switch Monitor to report redo logs that have been switched but not archived and the time elapsed in minutes since that log switch. This is to provide an early indicator of potential archiving problems.
Max extents A segment in the database is approaching its maximum number of allowable extents.
Tablespace status Checks that all tablespaces are online.
Free tablespace A tablespace is getting low on free space. Check is based on percentage of free space against total size.
Tablespace no extend A segment in a tablespace is unable to extend due to a lack of free space for its next extent.
RMAN data file backups Reports database data files that have not been backed up in the last 24 hours and 7 days.
RMAN archive log backups Reports database archive log files that have not been backed up in the last 24hours and 7 days.
RMAN log Watches the backup log for a specific database. Any errors are captured and reported.
ClusterWare Monitors the Oracle ClusterWare managed resources and detects if they are offline.
ASM mount Checks the mount state of an ASM Disk.
ASM free space Monitors for ASM Diskgroup free space.
ASM errors Traps if there is an error in the monitoring of an ASM instance.
ASM state Monitors for Diskgroup state.
DataGuard process Indicates that a managed recovery process is not running. Use this monitor if Customer has a requirement for the database to be constantly in managed recovery.
DataGuard archive gap Monitors an Oracle standby database for archive log gaps that may exist in the redo stream.
DataGuard log standby gap Checks the gap between the timestamp of the newest log from the primary and the latest that has been applied is larger than NN hours.
DataGuard log standby status Checks if the logical SQL apply is running for a Data Guard Logical Standby database.
Advanced Replication failures Monitors the deferred transaction error queue within an Advanced Replication database server.
Advanced Replication delay Monitors the deferred transaction queue for transactions that have not been propagated to remote sites within a specified number of minutes.
Advanced Replication status Monitors the replication group status and traps any that are not normal.
Advanced Replication objects Monitors for invalid replication objects in an Advanced Replication database server.
Advanced Replication age Monitors the deferred transaction queue for transactions that have not been purged. Performance issue can occur if the queue becomes too large due to full table scanning.
Advanced Replication requests Monitors the Advanced Replication administrative request queue.
Oracle session limit Checks to see if the number of sessions is reaching the configured maximum.
Oracle open cursors Reports on the percentage of available open cursors for a particular database.
Oracle DB scheduler jobs Prints the number of failures for the jobs in DBA_SCHEDULER_JOBS that are failing due to errors.
Oracle DB datafile max size Alerts if a datafile is detected to be auto-extensible but the max size is less than the current data file size.

Definitions

See Definitions for Managed Database Services.

If you have questions about our legal policies, SLA, or to report abuse, please use our contact form.