Monitoring MySQL Database

With over 65,000 downloads per day and six million installations worldwide, MySQL has become the most widely deployed open source database solution and is second most widely deployed database solution period! Originally released in 1995, adoption has steadily grown and with the acquisition by Oracle, MySQL now sets the standard as a robust low-cost alternative to high-cost enterprise data stores.

Early adopters included Internet pioneers such as Google, eBay, Craigslist and Yahoo, but the list of customers has steadily grown and now includes financial industry giants as Dun & Bradstreet, JP Morgan Chase, and telecom giants Nokia as well as pharmaceutical powerhouse Eli Lilly. Whether you are building and supporting commercial websites, distributing enterprise applications or engineering advanced communications networks, the technologies used to run your organization must be readily adaptable for you to remain competitive.

Foglight for MySQL Overview

Based on Quest Software’s leading application performance management solution; Foglight for MySQL provides combines world-class monitoring and alerting with operational best-practices designed to ensure the performance and availability of your MySQL databases. Utilizing standard API’s, the cartridge provides integration to MariaDB and MySQL Versions 5.0 and above. The robust nature of the Agent ensures its ability to collect granular performance data and display that information through intuitive, easy-to-use dashboards. Based on vast experience building and deploying monitoring solutions, Foglight for MySQL ensures the performance and availability of this critical component. The solution leverages best practices for collecting, storing and representing data as well as detecting environmental abnormalities.

True Enterprise Information Correlation

At the core of the solution is Quest Software’s Foglight. Foglight’s rich architecture combines a central repository, rules and notification engine, data visualization platform to provide an application performance management that is second to none. This platform permits MySQL data to be combined with data from other enterprise domains to create a true end-to-end view of your critical applications and services. MySQL data collection intervals are pre-defined but are user adjustable for each functional area of the database. Once data has been collected, it is stored in the Foglight repository for a period defined by the administrator. The repository centralizes data collection and facilitates data visualization and trend analysis. Combining MySQL data with other metrics collected by Foglight produces a solution that provides the operator with unprecedented visibility into applications and business services.

Dashboards

Data is displayed through database specific dashboards. Foglight for MySQL provides a series of specific dashboards for MySQL databases and tables. These dashboards are easily complemented and extended utilizing Foglight’s powerful drag-and-drop dashboarding capabilities. Operators can easily save dashboards as ‘bookmarks’ and return to them as needed. Dashboards and/or Reports can be created based on any data stored in the central repository and is not limited to data from a specific database such as MySQL.

Diagnostics is made possible through drill-downs from included dashboards. Each dashboard was designed to provide at-a-glance health state for domains. Additional diagnostic information is made available through drill-downs providing the critical information necessary to troubleshoot complex issues. Since most enterprises rely on a complex technology stack to ensure business continuity, Foglight provides the ability to correlate, view, alert and report on technology from most standard enterprise applications.

Rules Engine

Alerting is often the first indication that a problem exists or may exist if preventative measures are not taken in a timely manner. A notable strength of the solution lies is its ability to leverage both MySQL Error Log alerts and the Foglight rules engine. Error Log messages are propagated to Foglight where they are assigned a severity and can be acknowledged or cleared. Foglight provides the ability for notifications to be sent to administrative and support personnel. The Foglight rules engine permits the operator to easily construct or modify any rule based on any metric using standard operators and variables. A robust set of rules is included with the solution and is defined in this document.

Statement Digests

Statement digest monitoring extends the rich functionality of the MySQL Cartridge, providing the ability for Foglight to collect and analyze information from your MySQL server’s performance_schema for versions 5.6.5 and greater, or the Slow Query Log for lesser versions. Queries are normalized and aggregated in order to provide meaningful results on the performance of unique query structures without exposing nonrelevant or protected string values.

This functionality allows users to quickly identify slow running and problematic queries and helps administrators better understand the efficiency of these queries in both development and production environments with a minimal amount of overhead. Further information provides an accurate picture of how queries perform when the server is under a realistic workload with detailed metrics on performance throughout the query’s execution, along with an explain plan available on request. Coupled with Foglight’s historical data collection and powerful rules engine, this ensures you will be alerted on all negative performance trends or spikes in query performance.

Additional details will be provided shortly.