Introduction
Every business this day is seeking protection, from insurance of their businesses to even protecting their details and databases. It is important to perform database monitoring in a company; this will ensure that what you are doing is within your company’s bound and not the outside world. To protect your integrity as a company you need to instill security on company’s database. Most of the electronic dealings mostly rely on the stored information. It is of great importance for companies to always protect their information because this is the essence of company’s existence. It is of great importance for every system administrator to have knowledge of what is happening in their databases.
The Need for a Database
There is however various monitoring software’s in the market these days, obtaining the correct software is always time taking. Furthermore understanding the mechanism of particular software on database monitoring is another task all together. It is not easy for someone to reach to that conclusion alone without help from the professionals who have actually worked with such systems. However there are some features you should have on your finger tip about the database monitoring tools.
1. It should have a low overhead. This means that the monitoring software should not be overwhelmed by the pressure of the database work load.
2. Its collection of data should be detailed. The software you are using in database monitoring should be able to provide the detailed cause of performance in terms of resource consumption.
3. It should be able to provide the current and historical data. It has been observed that most of the software’s’ only provide a snapshot of the happenings. While others only gives the historic data. However the best software is the one which is able to give the historic data as well as the current performance. And even be able to perform diagnosis after the occurrence. An excellent system should as well be able to guide you on the trend of performance.
4. It should have low cost of implementation and maintenance. Most of database monitoring soft wares are known to be very costly and also difficult to install. However the best software should be cost effective as well as easy to install. The instructions should be clear.
Why monitor?
A question may pop up as to why perform the monitoring. Well it is important to perform database monitoring simply because, if a company has plans for the future, they have to monitor their servers this will give you:
- Utilization of the disk space. It is important to know how your space is being utilized.
- Usage of memory. If you have plans as a company to increase the number of users accessing to your database. It is important to know how your current memory is being used in order to know how much you require adding.
- Usage of CPU. CPU is an important component in processing information, however it is as well important to know how it is handling the current users and if need arises, how much do you need to upgrade.
- Curb uncertainties. Database Monitoring will enable you to deal with the threats. It enables you to identify the uncertainties in advance before anyone knows it. And be able to secure the situation before it goes out of hand. Situation like sabotaging of information can be reduced through monitoring your databases.
- Protect valuable data. Monitoring of database enable in securing the important information about your business against individual with ill motives to steal and destroy your data.
- Increase profits. Through early detection of database failure no losses are incurred.
- The access of reliable database improves the satisfaction of customers.
The PRTG Network Monitor
This is a type of network monitor which enable database monitoring and automate alerts for the common database servers. It as well ensures the availability of components used by the network and databases as well as performing measurement of the traffic and usage of the database.