It’s been a while since my last post! I have a few half-written entries, but I figured I just get one out there so I don’t appear to have dropped off the face of the planet

Being more of a DBA than a sysadmin myself, I’ve noticed that there is a surprising dearth of information regarding how to actually get nagios set up to monitor MySQL, especially if you’re not experienced with nagios.

In my own experience, MySQL monitoring often ends up being a homegrown thing, especially if you’re a small shop. It is definitely a good idea to consolidate all of your monitoring, DB-related or not, into one solution: roll-your-own monitoring solutions can be brittle and burn you in the end. One example that comes to mind, a few years back i had a quick perl-based script to monitor replication and set it to mail a few people based on some threshold. Took me 1 hour to write and worked well enough, except, six months later, when some …

To be fair - I highly doubt it has anything to do with MySQL.Database corruption - that's a different issue, often related to a bug in database code; but this was a data corruption issue, which is always a pain in the you know what to figure out and get fixed.I spent the last day trying to figure out the weirdness in a couple of our databases, digging around, explaining to developers that

As mentioned earlier , Packt sent me their Zenos Core Network and Systems Monitoring by Michael Badger to review.

So I spend the past couple of weeks trying to crawl my way trough it. Not that there was any problem with the book, more with my schedule :) I was hoping to finish it some time ago but time was working against me, even last week when my flight back from Zurich was a bit shorter than planned I couldn't finish reading the book.

But yesterday I managed, Michael managed to write a good book on a hot topic during what was probably one of the most busy of his life.

In 8 chapters Michael manages to explain the different aspects of Zenoss fairly well, he …

Hartmut rules!It started during …

Baron posted something interesting about agent vs agent-less monitoring in response to Rob.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the distinction is somewhat misleading, if not wrong.

I’d go so far as to say that agent-less doesn’t exist as such. Why do I say such heresy?

Trivially, you need some piece of software to collect data. With munin you configure a server that triggers scripts on the monitored servers. The set of data sources is governed by what you install in the correct directory on the monitored server. Cacti relies on SNMP heavily and also …

Rob Young has posted a few blog entries lately on the MySQL Enterprise monitoring software. His latest post claims that agent-based monitoring is equivalent to extensibility (MySQL Enterprise Monitor: Agent = Extensibility).

I think this is conflating two completely distinct properties of a monitoring solution. Cacti is extremely extensible, with a plugin-based architecture and [...]

Baron posted something interesting about agent vs agent-less monitoring in response to Rob.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the distinction is somewhat misleading, if not wrong.

I’d go so far as to say that agent-less doesn’t exist as such. Why do I say such heresy?

Trivially, you need some piece of software to collect data. With munin you configure a server that triggers scripts on the monitored servers. The set of data sources is governed by what you install in the correct directory on the monitored server. Cacti relies on SNMP heavily and also …

Baron posted something interesting about agent vs agent-less monitoring in response to Rob.

While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking that the distinction is somewhat misleading, if not wrong.

I’d go so far as to say that agent-less doesn’t exist as such. Why do I say such heresy?

Trivially, you need some piece of software to collect data. With munin you configure a server that triggers scripts on the monitored servers. The set of data sources is governed by what you install in the correct directory on the monitored server. Cacti relies on SNMP heavily and also …

Server monitoring is a big part of running a solid web site.  As an admin, you must know what is going on your server.  One of the tools most Linux/Unix admins are used to is called “top”.  “top” by itself is a very powerful tool.  Here is a quick guide on how to read output from top:  introduction to load averages under top.  It just makes sense that somebody went and created httptop to monitor http traffic.

Install perl modules:

install Term::ReadKey
install File::Tail
install Time::HiRes

Now copy paste the script below and save it in a location and set +x attribute on it so you can execute it.  On my …

I have completed a rough draft of the first chapter of "Drupal Performance and Scalability". The first chapter of this online book is divided into four sections, the first of which focuses on the importance of fully defining your performance and scalability goals, helping you to identify what you need to accomplish and how to set concrete and attainable goals. The second section discusses monitoring and measuring your ongoing progress, helping you decide what you need to monitor, and how to monitor it. The …