The Heat Chart also supplies key indicators for the most common performance diagnostics for a server (CPU, I/O, RAM usage) and the MySQL Instance(s) on that server. The colorized indicators on the Heat Chart let you know if something is out of line for a variety of statistics, plus the Heat Chart also supplies a count of all key alerts that have been issued for a server. You can easily drill down to find out all the alerts for a server or group of servers and learn what is actually happening behind the scenes.

Figure 3 – A Sample Heat Chart from the Enterprise Dashboard

The Heat Chart will drastically reduce the time it takes for you to understand the state of your servers and will be a big help in determining where you need to focus your time and attention.

Monitoring by Exception plus Expert Help

Although the Enterprise Dashboard of the Monitoring and Advisory Service provides excellent visual insight into the exceptions that have occurred in your monitored servers, many DBAs will appreciate the “headless” nature of the service. A lot of DBAs prefer to monitor by exception, which translates into being notified only if a critical need has arisen on a production server. This is very easy to do with the Monitoring and Advisory service through its notification mechanisms.

You can have the service send you an email notification when a critical issue has been detected so you don’t have to manually check the Enterprise Dashboard to see if any problems have occurred on your servers. You can also set up notification groups within the service so various DBAs receive notifications only for the servers they are responsible for. Currently the service supports SMTP notifications, but other notification methods (SNMP, RSS, etc.) are coming soon.

When a notification is sent, it contains a detailed explanation of the identified problem along with all relevant statistics. One thing particularly important to note is that, in addition to pointing out a particular issue, the Monitoring and Advisory Service also supplies expert advice on how to go about fixing the problem (even including the commands needed if applicable). This is a great feature for those new to MySQL because novice DBAs are often in the dark about how to go about making things right on a server. In addition, links to further reading on the topic are supplied through the Monitoring and Advisory service so you can bone up on the particular problem area. Links to the expert-written online Knowledge Base, the MySQL Manual, and more are provided.

Conclusion

The key to success in many active database environments is smartly automating tasks that can otherwise consume a large amount of your time. Given that recent polls indicate a DBA spends nearly 30% or more of their time troubleshooting their database systems, you can see why it’s wise to find ways to automate the enforcement of standards that keep your database servers up and running well.

The MySQL Network Monitoring and Advisory Service has been designed to automatically track the health of your MySQL servers around-the-clock and take the guesswork out of understanding where you need to focus your time and attention. I really like the ease with which this can all be accomplished and appreciate the fact that the service is every bit as effective for a hundred servers as it is for just a handful.

For more information on the Monitoring and Advisory Service, please visit the MySQL website at http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html where white papers, demo’s and more are available. And if you’d like to try out the Monitoring and Advisory Service for yourself, please contact a MySQL Account Manager.

Thanks, as always, for supporting MySQL!