Database

Database 102 – Why Is My Query Slow?

02/14/20 As a database administrator (aka DBA, or Default Blame Acceptor) throughout my career, I’ve worked with a myriad of developers, system administrators, and business users w…

Calculating the ROI of SQL Server Monitoring

02/04/20 I was recently approached to help develop our latest online version of a Return On Investment (ROI) calculator for the SentryOne monitoring platform. We know the ROI of ou…

MySQL Query Performance Statistics In The Performance Schema

01/12/20 Quite some time ago, when we added the ability to monitor MySQL query performance statistics from MySQL’s PERFORMANCESCHEMA, we learned a number of valuable lessons, still…

How AI Is Transforming the Data Center

01/10/20 There have been so many changes in data center technology in the past 10 years, it’s hard to keep up at times. We’ve gone from a traditional server/storage/networking stac…

What Is Cardinality in a Database?

01/05/20 Databases have a lot of jargon, and cardinality is one of those words experienced people tend to forget they didn’t know once upon a time. But if you don’t know it—and it …

A Quick Look at Parallel Rsync and How it Can Save a System Hours

12/29/19 In this post, we’ll take a quick look at rsync (“remote sync”) and parallel rysnc—a way to increase the efficiency and speed of traditional rsync—both of which can be effe…

Reducing SolarWinds DPM’s Agent Overhead With Partial Network Capture

12/23/19 This reduces our already-low overhead and enables higher accuracy in certain circumstances. Here’s a before-and-after image: To review, one of ways we measure production M…

What Is MongoDB’s _id Field and How to Use It

12/22/19 The MongoDB id field is fundamental to every collection in MongoDB, and, by default, it has some useful properties users can take advantage of when familiar with how id is…

Thoughts on the VividCortex Acquisition

12/20/19 I visited the Austin office this past week, my last trip to SolarWinds HQ for 2019. It’s always fun to visit Austin and eat my weight in pork products, but this week was b…

Quicker Azure Monitoring, Linux Change Detection, New API Poller – SolarWinds Lab #82 (Part 2)

12/19/19 The first step in improving system monitoring and visibility is getting data flowing sooner rather than later. For systems engineers managing diverse resources, it can be …

Holt-Winters Forecasting and Exponential Smoothing Simplified

12/15/19 Holt-Winters forecasting is a way to model and predict the behavior of a sequence of values over time—a time series. Holt-Winters is one of the most popular forecasting te…

Lockdown: Improving SQL Server Performance for Vendor-Locked Applications

12/13/19 Application vendors support many customers, and they often need to impose some control over variables in order to do so. For example, for me to help someone with the perfo…