In-Depth

BMC Partners with GoldenGate for Disaster Recovery

SmartDBA database management tool gets bi-directional data synchronization and replication capabilities.

• By Stephen Swoyer
• 09/02/2003

SmartDBA is the umbrella offering of the enterprise data management group at BMC, consisting of a Web-based console that facilitates administrative tasks (for example, space management, backup, and recovery) for distributed databases, including Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server.

According to William Donohoo, vice president of business development for BMC’s Enterprise Data Management group, BMC’s deal with GoldenGate allows it to offer bi-directional data synchronization and replication capabilities in SmartDBA as well.

One potential application for GoldenGate’s data synchronization capabilities is for disaster recovery, Donohoo says. “If you have mission-critical data on Oracle, you would like to replicate that database to another geographical location. So what you need is real-time data replication from source to target, and [GoldenGate] provides a disaster recovery scenario where you can fail over to a completely in-sync copy of your database,” he explains.

The enhanced SmartDBA boasts other capabilities, Donohoo points out: “You can also do some load-balancing and have two databases as sources—so you’re doing bi-directional synchronization between two databases.”

GoldenGate’s Rick Ainsworth, manager of international and direct sales, says his company’s software can also enable transparent migration scenarios from one version of a database to another. “If a customer is doing a database version upgrade, from Oracle 8 to Oracle 9, application upgrade, a hardware upgrade, adding more processors to their systems—whatever the case may be—the point is that we can facilitate the data synchronization without creating an outage. So from the end user [perspective], they’re never going to know what happened.”

BMC isn’t so much incorporating GoldenGate’s technology into SmartDBA as building links between the two products and reselling the company’s GoldenGate 7 data synchronization suite as its own. “We offer this product like a BMC product, priced by BMC, sold by BMC, supported by BMC. It has all of the profile of a BMC product with the exception of a name. In addition to that, we have a relationship where we’ve done some joint development and integrated GoldenGate 7 into the SmartDBA cockpit,” Donohoo confirms, noting that BMC will sell GoldenGate through its own internal sales force.

This relationship isn’t bi-directional, however; GoldenGate will not resell SmartDBA. The company, which grew out of the Tandem space, claims 2,000 customers for its data migration solutions. Ainsworth says his GoldenGate is particularly strong in the financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, and government industries.

The company supports all major distributed databases, along with Enscribe, Ingres, Teradata, TimesTen, and IBM IMS/VSAM environments.

GoldenGate Redux?

GoldenGate the vendor shares a similar name with GoldenGate the project, an initiative that BMC unveiled last year to deliver a centralized console—SmartDBA—for mainframe and distributed database management (http://www.esj.com/news/article.asp?editorialsId=300).

For his part, Donohoo says that BMC has fleshed out Project GoldenGate since it announced the initiative last year. “Part of Project GoldenGate is the ability to provide a single console for mainframe and distributed [management], yes, but we see customers asking for more solutions in this area: migration, business continuity, and disaster recovery. BMC did not offer a solution [for disaster recovery], and so this is a competitive response.”