database monitoring tools - what is your short list of requirements?

  • From: Jared Still <jkstill@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Oracle-L Freelists <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:02:34 -0700

The long running thread on monitoring tools has piqued my curiosity.

What would you say are the essentials for database monitoring?

Here's a list of things I consider important and track closely.
These are just *monitor* items.  There are several other automated
jobs that run against databases, but cannot really be considered
as a *monitor* type job.

* Space available on archive log volumes - kick off a backup if % too low
and delete logs
* Is database up?  - window during which paging occurs varies by database
* Alert log - monitor for ORA-, TNS and 'crash'
* There are monitors to check the database monitors and restart them if
necessary.
  (The biggest problem is on Windows where a service may not start at
startup)
* dba_jobs - are any jobs stuck?
* dba_jobs - are any jobs broken?
* rman - check catalog to see if backups are restorable up to yesterday
* rman - do a validate on 2 random databases ( once a month )
* security - monitor for accounts with default password
* security - monitor for accounts that should be locked
* security - monitor for expiring passwords
* storage - are any segments in danger of running out of space?
* performance - gather response time metrics ( db perspective)

Your list is likely highly dependent on the environment:  Size of IT shop,
number of DBA's, size of company, etc.

If you respond to this thread, please include a little environment
information if you can.

Here's ours: we are a small to medium size business, about 30 people in
IT altogether, with a single Oracle DBA.

There are about 30 Oracle databases, and about a third of those are for
production use by end users, with a fair amount of applications:

SAP, Oracle Apps, Agile PLM are the critical ones, along with a host
of smaller apps.


Jared Still
Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist

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