Optimize Your Databases Using Foglight for Oracle s Performance Investigator Solve performance issues faster with deep SQL workload visibility and lock analytics Abstract Get all the information you need to optimize your databases so you can focus on strategic business initiatives. The Performance Investigator (PI) feature of Foglight for Oracle helps you achieve optimal database performance by providing comprehensive database, storage and virtualization monitoring, as well as advanced workload analytics. While database resource monitoring ensures that database components operate within their limits by alerting database administrators (DBAs) when they re overextended, transaction workload analysis measures and analyzes the SQL statements that connect users to resources, enabling effective management of database service levels. Foglight PI integrates both to deliver a seamless workflow. Introduction Today s DBAs need smarter tools DBAs are charged with one of the most formidable tasks in IT: ensuring the integrity and availability of data. Traditionally, the DBA role was largely administrative and concerned only a handful of servers. But today s DBAs are challenged with strategic business initiatives such as big data analytics on top of the everyday firefighting necessary to keep all systems up and running that consumes as much as two thirds of their time. Moreover, even as the number of database servers continues to grow, the number of DBAs employed to manage them has decreased considerably. To be effective given these new realities, DBAs require smarter tools tools that enable them to keep all systems running efficiently so they can direct their expertise to more strategic
PI's multidimensional analysis enables you to slice and dice workload data from multiple perspectives. responsibilities and make the most efficient use of expensive database assets. Specifically, they need tools that help them: Focus on strategic business initiatives such as big data analysis by minimizing time-consuming manual tasks Ensure high service levels by proactively identifying and resolving database performance issues Gain visibility into which applications and users are impacted by a database issue Effectively manage a variety of database systems and adopt new ones, such as virtualization, cloud and new storage technologies Foglight s PI Foglight s PI feature enables DBAs to address these challenges by providing visibility into database resources, proactive alerts, advanced workload analytics, change tracking and more. Armed with these tools, you can get a complete picture of your environment to find and fix performance issues before they put the database at risk. This tech brief details the key features that will help you keep your database environment running strong so you can focus on helping to drive the business forward: Multidimensional workload analysis Lock and wait analysis Change tracking I/O analysis Execution plan analysis Comparison reporting Full support for all Oracle editions and configurations Enterprise-ready architecture Multidimensional workload analysis PI's multidimensional analysis enables you to slice and dice workload data from multiple perspectives. For example, you can drill into a list of databases to find the database with the most load, and then drill into that database to view the top users (see Figure 1) or even see SQL statements for individual users. Each user session can be individually investigated (see Figure 2), even in cases where the user name is masked by connection pooling. Figure 1. PI's multidimensional analysis enables you to slice and dice workload data from multiple perspectives. For example, this investigation reveals that one database user is consuming significant resources. 2
Figure 2. For another perspective, you might review resource consumption from the session activity dimension. Each user session can be individually investigated, even if the user name is masked by connection pooling. By drilling into any database dimension, you can quickly pull up key information, including the following: SQL statements Databases (Oracle Database 12c) PL/SQL blocks Users and sessions Locked objects Command types I/O-related dimensions (files, objects, disks) Lock and wait analysis Oracle databases use locks to ensure that only one command can execute on a database table or record at any given time. Locks often cause considerable application delays, especially in deadlock situations, which need to be addressed manually. By proactively alerting you to blocks and deadlocks, Foglight s PI enables you to take preventative action that avoids service interruptions or slowdowns that impact users (see Figure 3). By proactively alerting you to blocks and deadlocks, PI helps you avoid service interruptions and slowdowns. Figure 3. PI shows locking in the context of the dimension drilldown, so more detail is only a mouse click away. 3
Figure 4. PI displays blocking activity along with the responsible sessions. PI enables you to track changes in your database environment and spot configuration drift issues. Specifically, when lock timeouts exceed a predefined threshold, PI immediately notifies you with an alarm dialog box that contains helpful details and advice, such as: Affected components Number of timeouts graphed over time Expert suggestions for resolving the issue, such as reducing the locking time, range or number to avoid manual locking To improve collaboration and troubleshooting workflows, PI enables you to add notes to alarms and view the history of similar alarms all from the same dialog box. Workload investigations allow you to drill deeper into database locking so you can quickly find the user, session, SQL or program that caused the lock, as well as the users that were impacted. From the Lock Analysis dashboard, click the Blocking History tab for an overview of all the blocking that took place (see Figure 4). From this screen, you can engage in a full dimensional analysis of the blocking activity. Change tracking PI's workload comparison capabilities enable you to track changes in database environments and spot configuration drift issues (see Figure 5). This data can be visualized in the investigative drilldowns or used in the comparison reports. Figure 5. Foglight s PI tracks changes in your database environment and enables you to easily investigate the effects of those changes. 4
Foglight s PI tracks changes in: Execution plans For example, a new plan was found for existing SQL. Oracle configuration For instance, changes were made to parameters, a data file or the redo log. Oracle schema An index was dropped or a table was modified, for example. System configuration For instance, disks or CPUs were added. User-defined changes You can also manually define additional changes you want tracked. I/O analysis Since databases rely heavily on their interaction with the storage subsystems, it is essential for the DBA to be able to analyze performance from the storage perspective. PI provides dimensional information that enables you to start your investigation from the following I/Orelated components (see Figure 6): Disks Files (data files) Objects (tables and indexes) Execution plan analysis After identifying a potentially problematic SQL statement, PI can automatically compare its execution plan to prior plans stored in the historical repository so you can determine whether there are any significant changes in the plan that might have impacted performance. The Execution Plan Analysis dashboard, shown in Figure 7, enables easy analysis of historical execution plans. For example, you can: View all the operations associated with the selected plan along with important statistics such as cost, bytes, cardinality, temp space and time. View aggregated plan statistics for each operation in the execution plan. View aggregated plan statistics for each object that appears in the execution plan. View object statistics (last analyzed, size, number of rows, clustering factor and more) for each object in the execution plan. Compare two execution plans. Differences, including both operational and cost differences, are highlighted in Figure 7. Foglight s PI can compare a SQL statement s current execution plan to prior plans so you can find any changes that might have impacted performance. Figure 6. This multidimensional I/O drilldown identifies a machine that was causing excessive reads on a database file by using a specific program. 5
Figure 7. Foglight s PI makes it easy to compare execution plans by highlighting both operational and cost differences. Built-in smarts ensure that only events worthy of deeper investigation are reported to Foglight s historical data repository. Comparison reporting Built-in smarts ensure that only events worthy of deeper investigation are reported to Foglight s historical data repository. That repository then serves as a data warehouse for future trend analysis and reporting purposes. In particular, you can run comparison reports to track deviations from any known good state in order to inform troubleshooting, as illustrated in Figure 8. Comparison reports can be run in several different ways: Compare one instance to another one For example, you can ensure that your production environment matches your QA environment by comparing the configuration parameters. Compare one dimension s performance statistics at two different times You might use this option to determine the validity of a user s complaint that a certain report is running slower than it did before. Figure 8. At any point in your investigation, you can generate a report that compares the performance statistics of configuration parameters at two different points in time. 6
Compare instance activity (for a certain dimension if desired) to the captured baseline Foglight s Intelliprofile algorithm captures baseline activity according to hour in the day, day of week and week of month, so you can compare current activity to the appropriate baseline. Full support for all Oracle editions Diagnosing and remediating performances issues is particularly challenging for DBAs using non- Enterprise editions or the Enterprise Edition without the Tuning and Diagnostics packs. Foglight for Oracle can help. All of Foglight s advanced performance diagnostics capabilities are available for all Oracle editions (Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Standard Edition One) and do not require the Tuning and Diagnostics Packs. With Foglight for Oracle, DBAs can proactively identify problems, quickly investigate and address them, and verify the issues have been resolved. Full support for all Oracle configurations Foglight for Oracle supports all Oracle configurations (single instance, RAC, RAC One Node and failover cluster) over all Oracle-supported platforms, including Oracle environments that reside on Exadata. Enterprise-ready architecture Foglight PI also includes a variety of architectural features that reduce implementation costs, ensure rapid return on investment and enable fast deployment for better time to value: Scalability Because hundreds of database instances can be monitored with a single monitoring instance, Foglight PI supports enterprise-scale deployments. Low overhead Highly granular data collection is based on a one-second sampling frequency but has only up to 2 percent CPU overhead on the monitored database. High granularity To ensure highintegrity data, Foglight PI collects data at one-second intervals by default. You can adjust the collection frequency to meet your overhead requirements. Embedded repository The product includes a data warehouse that stores historical monitoring data, eliminating the need to purchase and maintain additional database instances to store the data. Web-based interface Foglight PI s web user interface (UI) provides easy access to workload analysis data from any laptop, PC or mobile device that has access to the Foglight server. Intuitive UI No extensive product training is needed because the intuitive interface ensures a fast learning curve for DBAs. Conclusion Foglight for Oracle s Performance Investigator extends resource monitoring workflows with integrated transaction workload analytics delivering a wealth of information at a fraction of the impact of conventional collection methods. Change tracking and comparison reporting help address configuration drift issues. SQL execution plan and workload analysis enable DBAs and application developers to find and fix issues in SQL generated by application code. And contextual alarms and detailed wait-event analysis proactively address deadlocks and blocking issues. To learn more about Foglight for Oracle or download your free trial, please visit software.dell.com/products/foglightfor-oracle/. All of Foglight s advanced performance diagnostics capabilities are available for all Oracle editions and do not require the Tuning and Diagnostics Packs. 7
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