Saturday, September 29, 2007

Mysql Network Monitor Adviser

We had this installed on one of our DataBase servers early today, I had the feeling that this will be JAMT (Just Another Monitoring Tool) telling you CPU utilization, Memory Usage.. and maybe some extra readings on Cache hit ratio and running queries, what else could it be, nothing more then some queries that could be done by some Bash/Perl scripts and shown with a nice web AJAX interface, Nothing I can't do.. or so I thought.

The installation went smoother than I expected, the idea that it installs Apache, mysql, tomcat and Java beside the instances already running on the server worried me a bit, i feared they might conflict with running production instances, but again I was wrong, the installer detected running services and installed itself somewhere else on different ports.. hmm smart.

The installation was done by just running a bin file for the server and another for the agent, and the setup walks you through an interactive installation.. till now i was not that impressed, it was just a clean installation script, something expected from MySQL.

The server ran smoothly and so did the agent, and ofcourse they communicated without any problems or interference from myside, and then the show began.

At the beginning it was everything i expected, some monitoring scripts shown on a flashy web interface, until i saw this icon, telling me i have a problem..



Table Scan and Query cache.. Interesting.
Once i clicked on the Query cache i got this message
"Advice

Evaluate whether the query cache is suitable for your application. If you have a high rate of INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE statements compared to SELECT statements, then there may be little benefit to enabling the query cache. Also check whether there is a high value of Qcache_lowmem_prunes, and if so consider increasing the query_cache_size."

Its not JAMT, its an adviser, it detects poor performance and configuration, and walk you through steps to analyze and fix your problems.

MySQL is impressing me day after day, i don't know if Oracle has such tool, but i know SqlServer doesn't!

What i see is that MySQL puts the client in mind, this poor DBAdmin who just sits days after days trying to resolve performance issues, and strange application activities, and then MySQL uses technology to serve him well, and make his life easier. On the other hand other Players in this market sector target the business owners, and how they could impress them using eye catching slogans like "High performance", "High availability", "Load balancing".. MySQL knows better that it can't do this without its real clients, the DBadmins and the SYSAdmins, so it keeps things simple and works with them to make MySQL a better place for Data.

I am really interested to know how MySQL is going to astonish me again next time, I am waiting for this, and i think it will be soon.

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