I just want to set some clarity on how we work in the operations shift.
During the weekend, alerts were raised due to planned maintenance, but they remained unattended for a few hours. When the user followed up, the response mentioned unawareness of the activity and suggested it should be handled by the Singapore region.
From an operations perspective, this is something we need to avoid. We are all experienced DBAs, and once maintenance communications are shared in advance, it becomes our responsibility to be aware of them. Telling a user that we were not aware of an activity should never be the message going out.
That is an internal gap and should not be communicated externally.
Region ownership does not remove first-line responsibility.. If we receive an alert and have access to the host, we should acknowledge it and do the initial checks instead of waiting for escalation. Verifying access is straightforward—something as simple as a ping usually confirms whether we can proceed or not.
The key expectation is: alerts must be acknowledged, ownership should be taken where access exists, and our communication to users should always be confident , accountable. And solution-oriented”**
That is an internal gap and should not be communicated externally.
also want to ask this openly: are we really communicating effectively on the floor? Are we actively discussing issues, ongoing tasks, and sharing knowledge during shifts? I’ve had conversations with some of you and noticed there are knowledge gaps that are not coming up during regular discussions. That’s a concern, because operations relies heavily on continuous communication and knowledge sharing.
