The State of Application Uptime
in Database Environments
Findings from a 2015 enterprise IT survey
Database failover takes down applications.
In the best of cases, database failover interrupts applications, and few enterprises
have architected for best case. Failover is usually manual and causes apps to hang.
For unplanned outages on your critical apps...
 users see app errors:
...for the duration of the failover 59%
...rarely 41%
 secondary promotion is:
...manual 60%
...automatic 40%
 following an outage, apps:
...must be restarted 62%
...can recover on their own 38%
Database outages are too frequent and too long.
The database is causing application downtime at least once a month for more than
20% of enterprises. Outages are lasting 20 minutes to three hours for more than 65%
of enterprises.
How frequently is the database the cause of
unplanned downtime?
On average, how long do unplanned
outages last on your most critical apps?
Less than a Minute – 5.7%
Multiple Times a Week – 0.5%
A Few Minutes – 23.7%
Once a Week – 3.5%
20-60 Minutes – 42.5%
A Couple of Times a Month – 7.5%
1-3 Hours – 23.3%
Once a Month – 9.2%
3-24 Hours – 4.4%
Less Frequently than
Once a Month – 79.3%
more than a day – 0.4%
Database maintenance crushes resources.
Performing maintenance on the database takes apps down, with almost 35% of
enterprises needing to call maintenance windows one or more times a week. And
valuable developer time is wasted too often.
When performing database maintenance do
apps require downtime or can they stay up?
72%
Require Downtime
28%
Can Stay Up
What roles are involved in a maintenance
window on your critical apps?
83%
Operations
81%
DBAs
52%
Developers
How frequently do you have maintenance windows on your most critical apps?
Less than Once a Month – 21%
Multiple Times a Week – 8%
Once a Week – 26%
Once a Month – 32%
Once Every Couple of Weeks – 12%
Deferred security is common, placing enterprises at risk.
More than 60% of enterprises report delaying security patches because of concerns
over downtime.
What events have you deferred or delayed because of concerns about downtime for your
critical applications?
Applying Security Patches
60%
Updating the App
70%
Upgrading the Database
73%
“This survey makes clear that enterprises cannot afford to maintain the status quo
when it comes to database availability. Having your most critical applications be
offline for 20 minutes to three hours, more than once a month, should not be
acceptable to any enterprise today.”
– Matt Aslett, Research Director, 451 Research
For more survey results, go to www.scalearc.com/SurveyResults