Cloud Database Monitoring using SelectStar – Part VII

We are looking at SelectStar, the heterogeneous monitoring solution for cloud databases. In the previous blog post here, we completed adding an Oracle database from our on-premise collector. The database then appeared in the SelectStar database overview page. We investigated the memory and CPU utilization of the SelectStar collector processes on the in-premises box to make sure the usage was reasonable. Next, we logged back in to the main SelectStar database overview page, and drilled down on the recently added “SaiProd” Oracle database.

The overview page appeared, where we could see the Alerts in red, and the Recommendations in blue. A graphical display of the last hour’s database wait time, query execution time, and session count was also seen on the overview page. Let us now move to the recommendations tab.

SelectStar has analyzed the collected and uploaded information, and based on its out-of-box body of knowledge, has made some recommendations.

We can see that there are four recommendations for this particular database. First, it has correctly found that there were no recent backups of this database, and has advised more frequent backups. There are two recommendations on multiplexing online redo log files and archive logs. And there is a fourth general recommendation on enabling flashback. We would have liked to see security recommendations too, perhaps that could come in later versions. Move to the Alerts tab.

A red alert is shown as High Datafile read time, greater than 1 millisecond. It is also possible to assign the alert to a SelectStar administrator that has been created by you, or to yourself. Move to the Advanced tab.

Here we see various graphs and pertinent information on the database, such as undo tablespace size, archive log mode, the fast recovery area, flashback, control file count, and so on.

In the instance configuration a few of the hidden database parameters (starting with an underscore) are also highlighted. Move to the Relationships tab.

Note that the relationships page does not appear properly in Chrome, but it does in Firefox. This page shows a simple relationship between the database, its instances, and its tablespaces. Move back to the Overview page.

Let us drill down on the Wait time graph.

We can see a more detailed listing of the database wait type, time waited and the wait count. You can select the date range as Hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, or Week. Currently the wait times seen in the last hour are displayed in the graph.

Move back to the Overview page, and click on the Queries graph to drill down to further detail.

Now, this is good. You can see the top Queries running in the database, meaning those with the highest performance impact. As before, the date range can be selected as Hour, 3 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, or Week. Each color in the bar represents a particular query. Hover your mouse over the bar and the query appears as can be seen below, along with its execution time.