IBM Security Verify

hello team,

In your experience, Is it necessary to deploying an extenal databases for runtime database ISVA 10 (Oracle, DB2 or PostgreSQL)?

We know that IBM's recommendation is to external the runtime database, but is the embedded database capable of supporting a high-load production environment? Is there any benefit to having the database embedded?

Thanks and Best Regards

I work with IBM Support and you are correct our recommendation is to externalize the databases. You could probably get by with the onboard databases for a while based on your load. But do you want to risk hitting that limit once you are in production and your load has reached a specific level, and then be faced with implementing the external database while under fire of an outage? The onboard database does not have the same access or control that you get from an external one for dealing with issues either such as tuning, fixing corruption, failover/redundancy, etc. So we recommend external databases not just for the capacity and load it can handle, but for other reasons as well.

Yes, it is highly recommended that the config and HVDB(runtime) be externalized. Just like you would use an external LDAP at scale.

The embedded database is not intended for a high-load production environment. The main benefit to the embedded databases is for quickly setting up small test environments.

In a Production/QA and often even Dev the need for high availability, standalone disaster recovery, and ease of backup/recovery into the database outweighs the convenience of the embedded database.

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/sva/10.0.3?topic=administration-runtime-database

"""Although the appliance contains support for an embedded runtime database, it is recommended that the embedded runtime database is only used in environments that require a small amount of data to be stored (for example, in proof-of-concepts, development and test environments, etc). In production environments, it is recommended that an external database be used to store the runtime data. In this way, the administrator can have much greater control over disk space allocations, high availability, disaster recovery, and database tuning. """