Monitoring MongoDB is very similar to monitoring a normal relational database.  If it’s on its own machine then you need to care about things like how much CPU it’s taking up, how much RAM, how fast are the disks etc.   If Mongo starts grinding on any of your core compute resources then guess what, you’ve got a problem!

A good Database Administrator, which hopefully we all aspire to be, needs to monitor more then just the basics.  A good Database Administrator needs to monitor the actual database.  Not to mention in many cases especially with Mongo you will need to monitor a cluster of databases, not just one instance.  You’re in luck with Mongo, because fortunately the folks at 10gen, the makers of MongoDB, have written some excellent documentation for how to properly administer and performance tune MongoDB.

In previous articles, we learned how to access Performance Counters metrics, how to access SQL Server data, and also how to add a Monitis page with multiple External Monitors. In this article we will put everything together and create a Monits page with the most important parameters for monitoring an SQL Server in production.
When monitoring an SQL Server installation, it is important to keep monitored the most basic metrics such as Processor and Disk. There are also several important metrics specific to SQL Server, as well as the size and the usage of databases and logs.

Sometimes, a basic understanding of how a program works just isn’t satisfying. While it is nice to understand how our logger operates, syslog-ng doesn’t start getting interesting until we start playing with some of the more advanced features it has to offer. So, let’s jump in.

The everlasting flame war.

So after reading this, it was time to show the world yet again that Linux is better than Windows. Duh.
In the mentioned article, we showed how to integrate into Monitis database query results from a MS SQL Server.

Many times while monitoring a system, you are not interested in “dry” counters such as I/O, memory, CPU, etc. Many times the more interesting counters would be a bit more applicative. These applicative counters usually reside within databases backends of such systems. And if it can be done on Windows, it can definitely be done on Linux, because we all know Linux is better!

But… why would I do it?

The MySQL database is a crucial part of a wide variety of products, particularly web applications. Naturally, it is very important to monitor the health status of MySQL.  However, there is constant disagreement on which of the many MySQL status variables provide the best overview on MySQL health status and indicate that something is not right with a server.

It certainly depends on what your application does – tuning read performance is different than optimizing write operations and everything changes when you have a cluster. The average user can use small subset of variables while advanced user want to get more detailed picture of the situation. So there cannot be one set of “magic variables” to quietly optimize every situation. However, it is possible to have a more-or-less optimal set of metrics that will allow to get a “good enough” notion about the general health status of MySQL Server.

The new white paper “Internal MySQL Database Monitoring Best Practices” discusses MySQL health, performance metrics and MySQL glitches. It can be downloaded free from the Monitis portal.

press release

SAN JOSÉ, CA., June 27, 2011 –  Any system administrator worth his or her salt knows that data is the oxygen of the modern age.

To keep the oxygen flowing Monitis Inc., the award-winning provider of the world’s first all-in-one systems monitoring platform, announces that users can now monitor their MySQL-operated database servers on Monitis’s free monitoring service – Monitor.Us. The new hosted MySQL monitoring service is available immediately.

“Our new MySQL monitoring service ensures high availability of database servers and performs a host of tasks to ensure MySQL is running smoothly,” said Monitis Founder and CEO Hovhannes Avoyan. “And because MySQL is the most popular database in use today, perhaps never before can so many system administrators get so much for free.”

Perhaps you’ve caught our series of blogs about NoSQL database storage tools?! Monitis has begun providing guidance on picking the right tool to match your company’s IT computing needs. In our previous blog post on NoSQL, we offered a comprehensive overview of Apache Cassandra – one of the many (currently there’s more than 100 popular solutions out there) NoSQL tools available.

Today, we’ll take a look at Apache HBase – originally created for use with Apache’s Hadoop, a software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a free license.

Our mission in these posts is simply to help you choose the best NoSQL DBSs – most of which are open-source and cost-free. After all, you want to make sure that your data is being stored safely. Aren’t there enough worries out there about data security – whether the data is being stored on the cloud or behind your internal, private firewall?

Gosh; there are so many NoSQL database storage tools out there. It’s almost as bad as brands of sport drinks or water. Have you noticed that some mega-supermarkets have whole aisles dedicated to what we drink!

As an IT system administrator or manager, it’s sometimes very hard to compare various NoSQL tools. It involves considering your special computing needs, matching them to what is out there, aligning what’s right for your organization and then make the right decision!

That’s why Monitis, the first hosted all-in-one network and systems performance monitoring service for sysadmins, is publishing a series of blogs that are meant to offer a comprehensive guide to NoSQL technology and brands. We want to help you make the right choice that fits the particular needs of your company.

Why should we care, you may ask yourself? Increasingly, our clients, who depend on our ability to monitor servers and networks and a host of other key metrics 24/7 from the cloud, want our advice, too, on what kind of scalable and robust database technology to use. So, we’re obliging!

Here, in a series of blogs, we’ll present research on existing popular NoSQL data storage tools that are generally intended to store unprecedented large amounts of data, offer flexible and horizontal scalability and provide blazing-fast processing queries. We’ll also get down to the nitty-gritty and compare several well-known NoSQL DBs…such as Cassandra, MongoDB, CouchDB, Redis, Riak, HBase and others.

In this first post, let’s discuss the reason why NoSQL technology is important.