The dbWatch Blog

Monitoring databases in large,  distributed or hybrid environments

Monitoring database or SQL servers can in itself be a complex task - as we discuss in SQL Monitoring - 5 steps to full control. But what if you have a really complex environment, with multiple locations, restricted networks behind firewalls, high number of servers or a hybrid solution with some on-premise and some in a cloud? What are the issues, and how can you resolve them?

dbWatch Enterprise Manager 12

No matter what the service, no matter what the purpose, no matter what the product, the cloud is being touted as an answer to scalability by pretty much every major vendor. It started with data-storage, and rapidly moved to databases. In the past we were limited by the actual hardware that we owned. If we needed to expand on it, we needed to purchase more memory, and in many cases we needed to purchase new hardware as the old wore out, or was incapable of handling what we needed it to do.

As most DBAs know, security of data is one of the most difficult yet important tasks of maintaining a large estate of databases. It has kept more than one administrator up at night worrying about potential threats and pitfalls. With the growth of the information economy, not only is most information stored in databases, the value of that information has grown. As with anything withvalue, the threats to security increases at a direct correlation to its worth.

Tuning the performance of SQL servers can be a complex and time-consuming task that can affect consistency. Frustratingly, there are no shortcuts either - it’s a job that needs doing and cutting corners can spell disaster for your organisation and require some costly maintenance to put right.

Considering migrating your databases to Azure? A new report by our CTO Marek Jablonski has revealed some very surprising facts about the performance you can expect from an Azure database.