What an exciting year it was for Foglight for Databases!
Foglight for Databases had an amazing year, with several releases for the various Database Cartridges. Here are some of the highlights of what we’ve done in 2017:
- Foglight for SQL Server & Foglight for Oracle – In February 2017 we’ve released Foglight for SQL Server & Foglight for Oracle Performance Investigator v.5.7.5.35 which included 2 main features:
- Advisories - seamlessly, fully automated engine that continually analyzes performance which provides action Items to implement in order to improve DB performance
- Workload Activity Highlights - Easy-to-understand explanations about the workload activity. The goal of this feature is to make DBAs life easier by simplifying the Performance Tuning process. An example would be: “The instance consumed 190,573 seconds of db-time. 70% of its time spent waiting for I/O”. Another example: “User David consumed 82% of instance total active-time. 100% of its time is associated with Lock Waits”.
You can view a demo of the above features in the following YouTube video which covers how to solve the mysteries of SQL Server and Oracle Database performance problems : https://youtu.be/HsEBbgpVHOI
Additional features in this release:
- SQL Server Databases Dashboard– Now provides high availability configuration for each database, including the last backup date on a mirrored server (if it exists).
- Cassandra and MongoDB Cartridges- Now integrated as part of the Foglight for databases global view.
Here are a few screenshots from this release:
Figure 1. Accessing advisories in Foglight Performance Investigator
Figure 2. Example of advisory
Figure 3. Workload activity highlights
- Foglight for SAP ASE – In September 2017 we did a complete refactoring of the SAP ASE cartridge from a C++ based to Java based agent. This aligns the SAP ASE cartridge with the rest of our DB cartridges. The value it brings to our customers is the fact that this change provides a significant deployment enhancement as we can now support for all the operating systems which are supported by the Foglight Agent Manager. In addition, the new java-based architecture allows us to respond faster to changes/enhancement requests in the cartridge.
- Foglight for MongoDB - in 2017 we’ve delivered 4(!) releases of our MongoDB cartridge. Here is the summary:
- January 2017
- MongoDB Clusters dashboard
- Auto-discovery for sharded cluster monitoring
- Added monitoring for cluster balancer
- MongoDB object cleanup dashboard
- Cluster and replication availability rules
- May 2017 - WiredTiger monitoring and dashboard
- June 2017
- New reports - MongoDB Cluster Summary, MongoDB Executive Summary, MongoDB Replica Set Summary, MongoDB Server Health Check, MongoDB Top Collections, MongoDB Top Profiled Ops, MongoDB Service
- WiredTiger performance rules
- July 2017
- MongoDB Log Monitoring dashboard
- MongoDB Clusters report
- Database Operation performance rules
- January 2017
Figure 4. MongoDB Service Report
- Foglight for Cassandra - in 2017 we’ve delivered 3 releases of our Cassandra cartridge. Here is the summary:
- June 2017 - New reports: Cassandra Cluster Summary, Cassandra Cluster Tables, Cassandra Node Executive Summary, Cassandra Node Health Check
- October 2017
- DSE Slow Query monitoring
- Trace monitoring
Figure 5. Cassandra Cluster Summary
- Foglight for MySQL – in 2017 we’ve delivered 3 releases of our MySQL cartridge:
- March 2017 - Galera cluster monitoring, rules, and reporting
- April 2017 - MySQL user and privilege collection
- October 2017 - Failed logins monitoring
Figure 6. Galera Cluster Monitoring
Figure 7. MySQL Failed Logins Monitoring
- Foglight for PostgreSQL – in 2017 we’ve delivered 2 releases of our PostgreSQL cartridge:
- January 2017 - On-demand explain plans
- December 2017 - Added index definition to Index table
Also worth mentioning, that in December 2016 we’ve delivered a very comprehensive release which included:
- New statements dashboards and rules
- New server configuration monitoring
- New reports - Executive Summary, Health Check Report, Server Configuration,
Server Configuration Comparison, Top Servers by Connections, Top Statements, Top Tables
Figure 8. On-Demand Explain Plans
Summary and a look to the future
In this article I’ve summarize the main releases we’ve delivered for Foglight for Databases during 2017, and what an amazing year it was. We want you to be happy using our products and therefore everything we’ve done is based on our customers’ feedback.
2018 will be an exciting year as well, as we will continue to invest heavily across all the various database cartridges. In addition, we will extend Foglight to support new data platforms.
Here is a list of some of the things we plan to do in 2018:
- Oracle
- HA & DR Monitoring Enhancement
- Data Guard tab in global view which will provide high-level visibility of all data guard environments and also detailed dashboard for monitoring Data Guard stability and performance
- Fast Recovery Area (FRA) dashboard
- New Alarms for database backups
- Change Tracking Report
- OS Lockbox available in the installer wizard
- HA & DR Monitoring Enhancement
- SQL Server
- Sessions historical TempDB usage monitoring
- Alarm for time since last transaction log backup
- SQL Server 2017 support – including SQL Server on Linux with comprehensive Linux monitoring
- SQL Server RDS support
- DB2 Cartridge – Enhanced Performance Diagnostics Capabilities
- Top SQL drilldown enhancements
- Workload activity enhancements
- Deadlock monitoring
- Execution plans monitoring
- Tablespace used percentage alarm customization
- Azure SQL DB Cartridge - Enhance our Azure SQL DB Monitoring including support for the latest Azure SQL DB release
In addition, we plan extensive functionality enhancements to our NoSQL (i.e. MongoDB & Cassandra) and Open Source RDBMS Cartridges (i.e. PostgreSQL & MySQL) including (but not limited to): advisories, overview dashboard, as well as deployment and usability enhancements.
Disclaimer: Please note that these plans represent our intentions as of the date hereof, and our development plans and priorities are subject to change due to competitive factors, availability of resources and other matters common to software or hardware vendors. Accordingly, we cannot offer any commitments or other forms of assurance that we will ultimately release any or all of the above-described products on the schedule or in the order described, or at all.
