Simplifying the complexity of managing Virtualised Databases

Key benefits of virtualisation aside, databases are inherently complex due to their business-critical nature of maintaining peak reliability, scalability and speed. Once virtualisation is introduced, an additional set of complexities must be considered. The following five best practices should be on every DBA’s radar to not only ensure a database virtualisation project goes smoothly, but also maintain top performance once virtualised:

1. Don’t fear virtualizing a large database with a high transactional load. Modern virtualisation technology is reliable and robust, and can deliver performance that is very close to running database on bare metal servers.
2. Develop a good working relationship with the virtualisation administrator. Without the ability to make changes to the virtual machine (VM) resources, the DBA will be missing out on the biggest benefit to virtualisation – agility. Unlike making changes to a physical server, which is a manual process, with just a few short clicks, additional CPU, RAM and storage resources can be added to a virtualised database server.
3. Utilise shared metrics to improve cross-collaboration between IT groups. Avoid confusion and finger-pointing by establishing a unified understanding amongst the database team, developers, system and virtualisation administrators. These teams can collaborate to stay on top of key considerations such as server resource contention and I/O bottlenecks.
4. Correlate physical host and VM resource metrics with SQL query performance. VM metrics can be misleading because the operating system does not accurately report resource metrics when running on a VM. By putting metrics in the context of query performance the impact of issues caused by noisy neighbors, VM events, and resource provisioning to be quickly identified.
5. Monitor SQL response time before and after virtualisation. It’s essential to have the right tools in place to gain visibility on response time. This data provides evidence that database performance is maintained or improved, and when performance issues occur, the analysis history provides the ability to pinpoint and resolve issues fast.

Database Performance Management for Every IT Pro, Organisation
As more databases are being virtualised, the way software is licensed also needs to evolve. Traditionally, enterprise software has been licensed per core. However, in a virtualised world, core counts can be easily changed, creating licensing issues that affect both deployment and scalability.

SolarWinds® Database Performance Analyser, formerly Confio Ignite®, provides comprehensive visibility into database performance issues on VMware® and aligns with this new licensing reality. Now with instance-based pricing, DBAs at any size organisation can afford to effectively and efficiently monitor, test and optimise the performance of all database instances.