TCSupportWeb

TCSupportWeb is the highly effective communications conduit between you and TwoCoast database administrators. At its core is a wealth of vital information about your supported databases, including TCAgent alerts and resolution, database maintenance activity, customer requests, and database performance statistics. TCSupportWeb's intelligent web interface to this invaluable knowledge repository makes TwoCoast database administrators extremely efficient and responsive when addressing your database issues. We grant you secure access to the same web interface, keeping you in the loop regarding all aspects of your database environment.

Job Tickets

A TCSupportWeb's job ticketing system provides an electronic workflow which tracks the creation, progress and resolution of database support events, including TCAgent alerts and customer requests.

  • Subscription and notification features keep appropriate individuals informed. Subscribe to a job ticket and receive automatic email updates.
  • The job ticket database is completely searchable, allowing TwoCoast DBAs to quickly research prior resolutions when addressing current TCAgent alerts.
  • Information about database configuration and performance is also instantly accessible, allowing faster resolution of alerts and requests.
  • TCSupportWeb provides a complete job ticket workflow.

Alert Notifications

TCSupportWeb is responsible for notifying database administrators when critical alerts are received. TCSupportWeb assigns a new TCAgent alert one of four severity levels (LOG, NOTIFY, WARNING, ERROR) based on the following criteria: alert type, source database, day of week, and time of day. The assigned severity determines what happens next:

ALERT SEVERITY ACTION TAKEN
LOG LOG alerts are simply recorded in the TCSupportWeb database. The successful completion of a backup or export is an example of an alert that is sometimes assigned the LOG severity.
NOTIFY NOTIFY alerts cause the generation of an email to TwoCoast DBAs and registered customer employees.
WARNING WARNING alerts cause the generation of new job tickets. Email notifications are sent to TwoCooast DBA's and registered customer employees. A tablespace nearing a defined storage threshold typically results in a WARNING alert.
ERROR ERROR alerts cause the generation of new job tickets. TwoCoast DBAs and registered customer employees are paged; email notifications are sent as well. A down database or stuck archiver are examples of conditions that generate ERROR alerts.

Alert Resolution Timeline

The following timeline illustrates how a job ticket generated from a TCAgent alert moves through the workflow:

03:45:00 AM TCAgent, monitoring SuperCorp's production database, detects an error in the alert log indicating a corrupt datafile.
03:45:01 AM TCAgent sends an alert containing relevant information including the archive log error message to TCSupportWeb.
03:45:02 AM TCSupportWeb classifies the alert and, based on the type of error, sets the alert severity to ERROR.
03:45:03 AM Based on the alert severity, TCSupportWeb pages the on-call database administrator(s). TCSupportWeb also creates a new job ticket, populating it with information from the alert.
03:50:00 AM The TwoCoast database administrator connects to TCSupportWeb and takes ownership of the job ticket, indicating that work has begun to resolve the problem.
03:55:00 AM The TwoCoast database administrator addresses the media failure by recovering the corrupt datafile from a recent backup.
04:17:00 AM Two SuperCorp employees are responsible for managing the applications that run on the production database. The TwoCoast database administrator subscribes these two individuals and the customer's primary technical TwoCoast contact to the job ticket. These individuals are now sent email updates whenever this job ticket is updated.
04:25:00 AM The TwoCoast database administrator updates the job ticket, describing the problem in detail and the actions taken to fix it.
04:35:00 AM The TwoCoast database administrator searches the TCSupportWeb repository for prior production database datafile corruptions. She discovers that a similar corruption, addressed by another TwoCoast DBA two weeks ago, occurred in another data file. Additional research reveals that the two corrupted data files reside on separate drives connected to the same controller. The TwoCoast DBA subscribes SuperCorp system administrator to the job ticket, and posts a note stating that the root cause may be a bad controller.
08:05:00 AM The SuperCorp system administrator reads the job ticket update in his email. He logs into TCSupportWeb and adds a note to the job ticket stating that he sees no indication of a problem with the controller, but will run some additional diagnostics.
08:25:00 AM The additional diagnostics do indicate a problem with the driver controller and it will have to be replaced. The SuperCorp system administrator creates a new job ticket to schedule and document the controller replacement.
08:45:00 AM The TwoCoast database administrator closes the original job ticket; all subscribed individuals receive an email indicating the closure.
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