Oracle Database Hosting Service provides professionally managed Oracle database environments for University of Minnesota academic, research, and administrative units. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) uses the Oracle Exadata platform which is a complete package of servers, storage, networking, and software that is scalable and secure.
Services are provided in a shared hosting environment (referred to as "hotels") where the databases of multiple University units are run in a secure and isolated fashion on several large, redundant hosts.
Table of Contents
- Getting Started
- Service Highlights
- Requesting Oracle Database Hosting Services
- Additional Information
Getting Started
Comply with the University Policy
Customers interested in hosting their data in the hotel databases must adhere to the Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources policy.
Determine Data Security Classification
Customers should review the Data Security Classification and determine the security level of their data. Customers may host data classified as private-highly restricted in the database hotel but PCI and PHI (HIPAA-regulated) data are excluded from this service. OIT evaluates each request to determine if it is eligible for our shared hotel environments.
Review Your Responsibilities
Oracle Database Hosting customers are responsible for:
- Maintaining and supporting applications, servers, and PCs that connect to the database instance.
- Oracle Database passwords must be rotated at least annually. Password expiration notifications will be sent as the expiration date approaches.
- Oracle authentications which leverage Duo prompts do not require annual rotation.
- Maintaining security and access control for users and applications accessing the data.
- Managing data retention in accordance with University policy and any applicable regulations.
- Data which is no longer subject to policy or regulations should be archived appropriately.
- Updating applications to ensure compatibility with the database environment.
- Providing application administration and end user customer support.
- Attest to granted data access on an annual basis.
Service Highlights
Database Environments
The Oracle Database Support team provides support for 4 Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Environments:
- DEV: The Development environment, where all development should begin.
- TST: The Test environment, used to perform unit testing of the changes as they migrate from Development.
- QAT: The Quality Assurance Testing environment, where changes are regression tested and validated in an environment which closely mimics Production before moving to the true Production environment.
- PRD: Production
NOTE: The PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications (Campus Solutions, Human Resource Management, Financials, and MyU/Portal) have additional environments. These include:
- DMO: PeopleSoft Demo environment, with latest image releases, on the same tools version as the SDLC environments.
- DMN: Demo instances with image level, patches, and PeopleTools version matching the Production environment.
- UMN: PeopleTools Upgrade/Patch Demo environments. Used for special events. Can also be used as a testing instance of the latest image changes.
- UPG: The Upgrade environment is typically used for PeopleSoft upgrades or image applications, while keeping the Development environment available for non-upgrade/image work.
- PER: A Performance and Load Testing environment for PeopleSoft applications.
- SNAP: The daily clone of Production used for Data Warehouse loads as well as Financial Reporting.
- QASNAP: The QAT version of SNAP, described above.
- FIX: A daily clone of the Production PeopleSoft database used for troubleshooting Production issues while leaving Production data untouched.
- TRN: The "gold copy" of the PeopleSoft Training database.
- CLS: The Classroom copy of the PeopleSoft Training database. This is copied each day from TRN, described above.
Database Schemas
Each University department gets one schema per database environment - one each for development (DEV), code and bug testing (TST), integration/staging/performance testing (QAT), and production (PRD).
Additional schemas may be provisioned according to project requirements but will be subject to quotas on resource usage.
The Provisioning and Access Request (PAR) group creates all new Oracle Database accounts. For additional information, read Requesting Oracle Access.
Back-end Database Support Services
Back-end database support services provided to database hosting customers include:
Backup and Recovery
- Backups are available for database disaster recovery (DR) scenarios.
- Full backups are taken once a week while incremental backups are taken daily.
- Backups are retained for 14 days.
Monitoring
- Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) monitors various Oracle database incidents that need attention.
- Incidents are based on events that are defined in OEM for various scenarios. Oracle Database support receives alerts via email. Notifications for critical Production incidents are sent to the Oracle DBA On Call via PagerDuty.
- Oracle Database auditing is set up in compliance with the University of Minnesota auditing policies.
- Oracle Database Service Level Availability (SLA):
- Production: 24x7x365.
- PeopleSoft SNAP: 24x7, except during the daily clone window.
- DEV/TST/QAT: available M-F 7:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- All Other PeopleSoft Databases: available M-F 7:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Patching
- Quarterly security patching is performed within 30 days of security patch release and availability date.
- Patching typically takes place over 3 days: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is done to minimize the impact to Oracle Database Hosted Service customers.
- Customers are notified via the oradbnotify Google group a few days prior to the patch install date. Notifications are sent for Non-Production patching as well as for Production Patching.
- To receive notifications about Oracle Database Service maintenance and patching activities:
- Navigate to the UMN Google group Oracle Database Notifications.
- Opt-in by clicking Join group.
- Refresh the page to see the welcome message.
- To receive notifications about Oracle Database Service maintenance and patching activities:
Requesting Oracle Database Hosting Services
New Customers Requesting Oracle Database Hosting Services
Units must go through an onboarding process in order to use the service. To get started, the local IT or business unit director should contact the Service Owner for Hosting Services.
Requesting Oracle Database Support
Oracle database customers can reach database support via the Database Support Request form.
- IMPORTANT: We cannot accept new Oracle Database Schemas through the Oracle Database Support Request form, you must use the proper Access Request Form (ARF) provided by the Provision and Access Request (PAR) Team. To determine which form to use for your situation, read Requesting Oracle Access
TDX Requests can also be created by sending an email to [email protected]