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Checking the Status of Your Database Servers with dbWatch

Posted by Lukas Vileikis on May 6, 2021 10:04:00 PM
Lukas Vileikis

About the Author:

Lukas Vileikis is an ethical hacker and a frequent conference speaker.

Since 2014, Lukas has found and responsibly disclosed security flaws in some of the most visited websites in Lithuania.

He runs one of the biggest & fastest data breach search engines in the world -

BreachDirectory.com, frequently speaks at conferences and blogs in multiple places including

his blog over at lukasvileikis.com.

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Checking the status of database servers is a daily task of nearly every database administrator – checking the status of your database servers is like monitoring the health of your database servers: by utilizing proper monitoring techniques, you can make sure that your databases always perform at the very best of their ability no matter what happens. In this blog, we are going to explain how to do that with dbWatch. 

 

Why Should You Check the Status of Your Database Servers? 

As far as the database world is concerned, checking your database servers' status can prove to be an essential tool in the shed to improve your database performance or ensure that your database performance stays in shape no matter what happens. Checking the status of your database servers allows you to identify the key areas where potential issues with the configuration of your database instances can interfere with their performance, identify slow running queries, misplaced or missing indexes, monitor the growth and capacity of your database servers or decide when it’s time to switch hosting providers and move to a new server. There are quite a few tools that help you check your database servers' status – we are going to be focusing on one of them. That’s dbWatch. 

 

Why Should You Use dbWatch? 

Before we tell you how you should check your database servers' status with dbWatch, we should probably tell you what dbWatch is. In general, dbWatch is a highly scalable software solution that helps enterprise customers monitor and manage both small and large numbers of database servers efficiently by providing total control over all aspects of their operation, performance, and resource usage. dbWatch is highly effective across many platforms; it doesn’t matter what your databases are based on – it supports almost every platform you can think of, including MSSQLOraclePostgreSQL, SybaseMySQL, or Azure SQLSince the dbWatch team comprises leading database experts in Norway, the software can help you solve your database management and monitoring issues in no time. We already explained why dbWatch could be a great choice if you are dealing with one or more database instances – now we will explain how you should check your database servers' status using the software. 

 

Checking the Status of Your Database Servers with dbWatch 

dbWatch can also help you check the status of your database servers. There are multiple ways to do that 

– for example, the simplest one is to open up dbWatch and take a glance at the database status at the monitoring module: 

 

 

The index page lists the database instances which have lost connection are not monitored, or have other status types. The page lists the number of database instances, their names, their groups, and the status time, which depicts when the databases were last checked for errors. For example, those database instances that did not have any issues at the time they have been checked will be listed under “Ok”: 

 

Database instances that do have issues, on the other hand, will be listed under the “Warning” category:

 

Similarly, database instances that have significant issues and need immediate looking into will be listed on the alarm category, etc. Issues can be observed at the database instances tab (the orange status gear means that there was a warning, as you can see from the example above): 

 

There is also another way – simply head over to the “Server” tab and click on “Server States”: 

 

In the window that opens up, you will be able to see your server name; you will be able to perform a traceroute and access a menu that looks a little something like this: 

 

 

This menu can be your savior when checking the status of your database servers with dbWatch. You can connect to or disconnect from your database instance in question or do other things. For example, you can configure the connection to the instance (in this case, the server name is blurred out): 

 

It also gives you the ability to configure your connection parameters: 

 

Need to optimize query speed further to try out different things? Did not yet have the time to add or remove an index on a particular table, so you need to do it tomorrow or next week? Take notes! 

 

 

Need to take a backup of the dbWatch logs to glance at them now or any time in the future? dbWatch has you covered in this area too, select “Get logs” and download the zip file: 

 

Finally, extract the zip file to gain access to the log files and see them: 

 

 

Then you can observe what went wrong with the server, the output, and the server logs. The error log file logs all of the errors, the server.log file logs everything related to the dbWatch server, you also have an output.log file that might contain some juicy information too. For example, here’s how the server.log file looks like from the inside:  

 

You can easily see the memory information, the virtual machine properties, where the ControlCenter is installed, your user directory, your java runtime version, etc. Not all of this can be helpful – that’s why you also have the error and output logs which can help you observe what possibly went wrong with dbWatch at what stage so you can try and correct the errors,

  

Summary

Checking the status of database servers is a near-daily task of nearly every database administrator. Checking the health of your database server instances is critical if you want to push them to their limit – dbWatch can be of great assistance when doing that. Keep in mind that dbWatch can not only be used to check your database servers' status: as already previously mentioned, the tool can be used to solve issues regarding MSSQLOraclePostgreSQLSybaseMySQL or Azure SQL database instances. For example, dbWatch can be used to solve problems pertaining to MySQL engines, including InnoDB and MyISAM, you can use dbWatch to monitor the performance of database indexes and other things. dbWatch can also provide you with a set of logs – the logs, depending on what they are (there are three categories: error logs, server logs or output logs) can help you find out what went wrong with dbWatch when executing certain things. Error logs log all errors, server logs log when dbWatch was started, the memory information about the server dbWatch was running on and similar information and the output logs log warnings and similar things related to dbWatchTo read more about dbWatch, consider reading other articles on the dbWatch blog.

 

 

Other Blogs:

Managing your Database Instances with dbWatch

The hidden Gems of dbWatch - Understanding dbWatch internals

 

Topics: database operations, sql server monitoring, sql monitoring tools, database monitoring, sqlmonitor, sqlperformance, sqlmanager

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