Assuming the two sites can talk to each other, the minimum you will need is the SQL*NET client at your location. This will allow you to get to any other valid location. As for tools, OEM is very convenient for managing remote databases, though most 3rd party tools can do this, also.

We manage quite a few databases remotely, on both Unix and NT, using tools like radmin and reflectionsX when we need to be ‘almost as good as being there’, and just plain old OEM or sqlplus/worksheet for the times when all we need is a SQL prompt.

A safe network configuration and secure OS counts for a lot, just like they do locally. Who has admin rights on your servers? Are there any weak programs? Telnet is disabled here as a mechanism of accessing unix boxes for security reasons. Sqlnet….you don’t actually have to be logged in to your network to establish a sqlnet connection; you just need to be connected physically to the network and able to get to a prompt so you can run a tool using it. Can you get to a command prompt on your network without logging in? (This was in v2 and earlier, not sure about the current stuff.) So, standard practices like no ‘out of the box’ standard passwords on accounts (have you changed dbsnmp’s password, for example), no easy to guess passwords, and regular password changes help too. Profiles and using a password verify function can help with some of this, as well as auditing failed logins.

Other comments…. Automate as much as you can, especially monitoring and care-and-feeding type processes. Consider, if you need to rebuild or upgrade a server, how you will access the install media. You won’t want to run the oracle installer over a WAN or other long distance network with the CD in your computer, and the other server on the other coast or in another country.

Lyn, who sometimes can be in more than one place at the same time

I administer remotely several databases under Oracle 9i with UNIX (Solaris 8). I run the Secure Shell client (SSH) on my workstation with Net8 providing the network connection for SQL prompt. You need to have listener.ora and tnsnames.ora properly configured. For security make your passwords difficult to guess and set up a password expiry schedule to expire passwords on a scheduled basis. I do not use any third party tools for DBA work.

Pushing the question a little farther – I connect to a remote site via citrix and establish a console session to do a disaster site database load. Does anyone have an answer as to how to keep the citrix session persistant (connected) so the import finishes without my trying to keep the session alive. My alternate method is via pcAnywhere but I cannot rely on always having the client with me. Ideas? Thanks.

ref the secondary question about citrix and not losing a connection….if it is unix, check out nohup. If it’s NT, move to unix. lol. Actually, in the NT case, I will use the Citrix server to radmin to the server or my desktop at work because even if citrix disconnects me (which has been known to happen), I can just reconnect to the radmin session when it gets back.

Lyn

I setup an Oracle HTTP Server and an Oracle Management Server in the office. If you have high-speed internet access from the remote site, this option works great (in my opinion). All you need is a browser. This is all explained in the Oracle documentation.