Notes

Why monitoring softwares don't solve the problem?

There are many monitoring software/tools out there. Some very good, others not so much.

However, what not a single vendor / service provider tells you is that monitoring tools, alone, do not solve the problem of faults in services, databases, applications, infrastructure, etc.

I'll list some of the scenarios I've seen in my 30+ year IT career:

1 / Endless Emails: Sending tons of email alerts, failures, downtime, performance to your database analyst (aka DBA), or infrastructure analyst whatsoever, for example, will only increase the flow of emails in their inbox. Who will read those emails? Who will take database monitoring ? Typically, the analysts has far more noble tasks than wallowing in emails to decide what is important or not.


2 / Application Push Alerts: What if the analyst is using "Do Not Disturb" mode? What if the smartphone battery runs out? What if there is no area coverage? Finally, if the analyst simply can not or don't want to answer back?

3 / SMS: A more invasive technique, but it works far better. Even if there is no data coverage, the good old SMS does not usually fail. But, still, there is the problem with battery, availability, and some some coverage issues.

4 / Most tools trigger alerts (emails, push, sms) for a certain group of people, depending on the type of problem and severity. It can generate legal, and costly problems by triggering people out of office hours.

5 / Extra Hours: Triggering resources, unnecessarily, outside of business hours beyond the legal issue, there is also a hidden cost with overtime.

6 / Keeping a monitoring team is expensive. Typically, installing a Network Operations Center (NOC) is expensive. Well, at best you need to have at least 2 people 24/7. It is an unnecessary cost, and it is not part of the core business.


Therefore, database analysis reinforce my thesis that monitoring tools alone help to understand the problem through charts and histories. But, they do not solve the problem.

In fact, monitoring tools end up creating an additional problem with alerts that are never read, unnecessary overtime, and overloading professionals.

So we created dbsnOOp. It delivers everything a monitoring tool, however, adds 24/7 monitoring service, linking to the right resources, avoiding team overloading, mitigating legal issues, and saving money spent with overtime.




Website: https://dbsnoop.com/