Reactive or Proactive, That be the Question

As time goes by, reacting to performance issues is no longer good enough to be a good Database Administrator (DBA). It is crucial for DBAs to be constantly proactive in their database management activities in order to improve the stability of the databases they manage and the quality of their work.

It’s not easy to be a proactive database manager, with each new database release the number of features to manage increases substantially; moreover, in order to be able to manage more databases, DBAs have to develop new productivity tools.

To avoid basing decisions on guesswork, it is crucial to develop performance technologies to automate data collection and analysis, which is needed to turn raw data into useful information. In fact, high-quality data allows proactive DBAs to make better decisions rather than experience alone which in turn will help them meet their performance objectives.

On the other hand, performance technology must not contribute more to complexity than to the understanding of performance; that’s why it is important to detect unusual behaviour, identify the root cause of performance bottlenecks and restore and optimise performance. For the same reason, it’s not a minor matter to assess which technologies are most effective in improving the quality and stability of database performance.

Here are three levels of performance monitoring and analysis relevant to database management:

• Application performance monitoring identifies problems between end users and the database
• Instance monitoring identifies problems affecting the database infrastructure that can disturb the user experience
• Transaction workload analysis enables DBA’s to prioritise high-impact sources for resolutions, prevention and optimisation; therefore, being essential to critical databases

Our well-oiled, 24/7, proactive Oracle and SQL Server DBA team are constantly monitoring and assessing our clients database environments, ensuring that they are getting up time all the time. Speak to one of our account managers to make the switch from a reactive to a proactive database monitoring system.