Rapid experimentation for testing and tuning a production database deployment
Nedyalko Borisov, Shivnath Babu · 2013
The need to perform testing and tuning of database instances with production-like workloads (W), configurations (C), data (D), and resources (R) arises routinely. The further W, C, D, and R used in testing and tuning deviate from what is observed on the production database instance, the lower is the trustworthiness of the testing and tuning tasks done. For example, it is common to hear about performance degradation observed after the production database is upgraded from one software version to another. A typical cause of this problem is that the W, C, D, or R used during upgrade testing differed in some way from that on the production database. Performing testing and tuning tasks in principled and automated ways is very important, especially since---spurred by innovations in cloud computing---the number of database instances that a database administrator (DBA) has to manage is growing rapidly.