If we analyze the evolution of corporate database fleets, we see a constant growth in data volume, in the number of databases and also in the variety of databases. However, this is not necessarily reflected in the number of DBA staff - in fact, the opposite is true. Our expert Bernd Jodocy explains how you can optimize your database management with a single tool.
As a result, today's DBAs face a number of major challenges: they have to do more and more with fewer resources, and they can no longer be satisfied with mastering just one database technology.
The answer that database publishers are trying to provide is greater automation and increasingly sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, tools. Indeed, each database now comes with its own management and monitoring software: Enterprise Manager for Oracle, Management Studio for SqlServer, PgAdmin for PostgreSQL, MySQL Workbench for MySQL, OpsManager for MongoDB, etc.
So, on top of the difficulty of understanding the various specificities of databases, the DBA has to master these specific tools. And let's not even mention the time wasted switching from one tool to another. Wouldn't it be better to have a single, centralized tool for your entire fleet? That's exactly what Foglight is all about!
Centralized console
Foglight allows you to monitor all your databases from a single and centralized console, always giving you complete visibility of your installed database. You can also optimize your databases through alerts, diagnostics and performance analysis.
In-depth problem diagnosis
Foglight also enables you to quickly explore database integrity or performance problems, whether in real time or in history.
Integrated management and performance dashboards help you understand database activity. Foglight enables multi-dimensional exploration of the SQL workload. You can explore the SQL data cube to easily study the database workload and view all dimensions of your data, including users, programs, SQL and sessions.
You can also solve competitive access problems in record time, thanks to historical reviews of blocking and locking scenarios. Lock analysis is part of the dimensional exploration workflow, significantly simplifying investigations.
Adaptive alert system
Rather than constantly validating database performance and availability, you're alerted only when critical problems arise. In fact, Foglight provides a library of ready-to-use alarms, including base deviation alarms, which provide detailed information for troubleshooting. The adaptive alert system is triggered by deviations from normal activity over different periods and enables performance to be monitored with automatic detection and calculation of normal values (Baselines) for all measurements.
It's also easy to add alarms, including those based on your own scripts, or to integrate it seamlessly with your other enterprise monitors.
Extended reporting
You can use the data collected by Foglight to develop customized dashboards and reports. Foglight provides hundreds of predefined reports that you can extend and adapt to your needs.
Customer feedback on Foglight
We also asked one of our customers, a financial institution in Belgium, why they have been using Foglight for over 15 years.
The DBA team has to manage a wide variety of databases, including Oracle on Sparc Solaris servers and SQL Server on Windows, but also on Azure.
Foglight gives them a single dashboard for the entire installed base, enabling them to monitor activity, availability and performance.
The DBAs have adapted the alert system so that only critical alerts are forwarded to central monitoring. This has enabled them to significantly reduce the number of calls during nights and weekends.
The information gathered by Foglight is used to generate periodic reports with essential information for the DBA team, but also KPIs for management, including information on performance, growth, number of alerts over the period, etc.
But it's not just DBAs who benefit from Foglight. Development teams also have access to Foglight's Performance Investigator, enabling them to optimize their code independently. This greatly enhances code quality and enables design problems to be detected earlier, thus preventing performance problems from being detected after production.
This and other features mean that DBAs and developers can't imagine having to do without Foglight.
To resume
Today's DBAs are faced with a host of challenges, and the need to be increasingly effective in an increasingly diverse environment. Foglight is an effective way to meet these challenges and - in reference to the name Foglight - to be the guiding light through the database “fog”.
In short, Foglight offers :
- A unique monitoring and diagnostic platform for hybrid database environments
- Powerful analysis of database workloads for optimization
- Customizable alerts and reusable alert templates for useful system notifications
- Proactive problem detection and analysis capabilities using Performance Investigator (available for Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL)
Please contact us for more information on Quest Foglight and how we can help you implement it.
