A reliable database system is necessary in the IT operations of an organization to ensure unhindered delivery of information. This is especially true when it comes to business-critical applications, as disruptions in a database system directly impact the end-user experience, ultimately harming your revenue and reputation.
Learn about the difficulties inherent to database systems and how monitoring helps resolve these problems. In addition, get to know the best practices of database monitoring and how it can help your company save valuable time and resources.
Why is it essential to have a database performance monitor?
Whenever an application crashes or suffers a latency issue, the first course of action for an administrator is to check for underlying issues in the database.
In this age of speed and impatience, databases require constant monitoring for health, availability, and performance upkeep. If left unmonitored, a faulty database system can lead to over-consumption of resources, server and application crashes, memory issues, and increased latency that could hurt you and your business.
For example, while trying to log in to their online shopping account, users might receive an error message that says “Your login credentials cannot be found.” This happens when the website isn’t able to access the corresponding database system where login credentials are stored for authentication. Or there may be times when a web application takes excessively long to query data from the relevant databases, causing performance lag.
These are all instances of database-related issues that could prompt users to jump ship. To prevent such inconveniences, organizations can employ database performance monitoring tools and resources.
How is database performance monitoring achieved?
Database performance monitoring is achieved by proactively collecting in-depth metrics of a data storage system to gain insights into its real-time functioning and efficiency. This way, you can identify and troubleshoot database-related issues before they escalate into a catastrophe, and ensure your users have a delightful web application experience.
As most organizations operate around a huge IT infrastructure, it may prove challenging for administrators to keep a constant watch on their database systems. That’s why a business will automate and optimize the surveillance process with a robust database monitoring tool.
Important performance metrics for database monitoring
A healthy database plays a vital role in ensuring that the associated application performs at its optimal level. Metrics such as availability, DB response, indexing, capacity, sessions, and performance can be used to determine the health of a database system.
These parameters can be used to identify any shortcomings that may directly or indirectly impact your database infrastructure. The five major factors that would affect the performance of a database system are:
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Slow SQL queries
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Session/Job overload
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Inefficient indexing
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Bulky data types
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Inadequate capacity
This is where database performance management comes in handy.
A database performance monitoring tool aims to constantly observe key performance attributes that drop hints about the occurring issue or help prevent one. Here are some of the key database performance metrics to keep an eye out for:
1. Health and availability
Health and availability are one of the most crucial elements when it comes to database monitoring. Being able to guarantee that the data can be retrieved at all times largely benefits the revenue stream of an organization.
Investing in a monitoring tool to ensure that the database is constantly accessible will go a long way to cementing the reliability of your application among customers.
To make things convenient, database monitoring tools like ManageEngine Applications Manager provide users the flexibility of configuring an availability threshold that would automatically detect and notify administrators in an instance of unavailability.
2. Performance and Capacity
More often than not, database under-performance occurs as a result of insufficient resource allocation. Negligence in database resource planning might lead to performance bottlenecks, directly impacting the end-user experience.
The primary focus of using a tool for monitoring database performance is to allow administrators a certain degree of visibility into the underlying operations that run in a database system.
By utilizing a database monitoring software like Applications Manager, admins can identify and allocate resources for a more efficient database system. Information such as overload in network traffic, I/O processes, CPU load, or memory usage as shown by Applications Manager’s DB monitoring tool can also be used to make database infrastructure upgrades.
3. Database response (Monitor Slow SQL queries)
Another major component that leads to performance bottlenecks is the use of inefficient codes written by developers that might cause join duplicates, growth in exponential query time, and bloated indexes.
It isn’t good practice to have a SQL query run through more data than is required, neither is it efficient to have multiple queries where one could get the job done. These events may cause delayed SQL queries that slow down your application’s background transaction performance and result in a longer database response time.
Applications Manager’s database monitor pinpoints slow-running and expensive query statements. With the aid of attributes such as CPU time and execution time, admins can make necessary changes for a more efficient query statement.
4. Database events (Session details/Job details)
A comprehensive understanding of database events is necessary to discern inconsistencies that might escalate into a major issue. A conventional monitoring tool can analyze trends to expose and interpret database events as session/job details.
Through Applications Manager’s database performance monitoring system, you can get the individual performance breakup of sessions/jobs involved, along with the components associated with it. Make necessary tweaks and adjustments to enhance the data storage system using metrics like operating status, response time, memory usage, user information, application info, database details, and more.
Applications Manager’s Database Monitor
ManageEngine’s Applications Manager serves as a one-stop solution for your database monitoring and performance analysis needs. Applications Manager stands out from other database performance monitoring solutions by providing out-of-the-box monitoring for multiple technologies within a single console.
Key advantages in using Applications Manager’s database monitoring services include:
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Easy and agentless monitor configuration.
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Alarm and threshold profiles for crucial attributes to be monitored.
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Graphical data representation for performance evaluation.
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Replication feature monitoring.
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Code-level understanding of SQL query execution.
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Advance feature to monitor and enable output for single query statements.
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Custom dashboards, business process groups, and widgets for efficient database management.
In addition to supporting relational databases, there is also monitoring support for NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, Cassandra, and cloud databases, such as Amazon DynamoDB, Azure SQL Database, etc.
Learn more about the different functionalities that come with Applications Manager’s tool for database performance monitoring. For those who wish to explore the monitoring software on their own, download a 30-day free trial now!
