MySQL has had this Enterprise Monitor around for a while, but I’ve not had the chance to try it. Well, all this changed briefly in July, when I was doing my APAC tour, and folk wanted to see Enterprise Monitor at work. Back then, I showed them some canned screenshots, and in Singapore, Kim Seong (famous on #mysql) from our partners Global Link, had some kind of special login, so they demoed it. It wasn’t until this week that I actually tried it (besides, it wasn’t until the UC-J that it was re-launched with new features), and found some time to play with it. And I was blown away.
An excessive table scan, you say?
With new features for replication monitoring, personally what I find most useful are the pretty graphs (you may not find it useful with one or two machines, but in an enterprise-level install base of databases, graphs are not only pretty, they are useful). On top of the graphs, there’s also advisors, which save you time, so that you can avoid reading the documentation, or finding pain points, yourself. I think this is what Brian really referred to on saving your Jedi’s time. Advisors, are crucial, and I think that’s what differentiates this product.
How to fix table scans… and links to the manual!
The UI is impressive. Its all very modern, looking very Web 2.0. Its Tomcat based on the backend, so the install file is a tad large, and the usual requirements that come with Java applications are present, but I’m pleased to say the server I’ve had access to play with is an under-powered AMD machine. You can set it to auto-refresh in your browser, which can be useful for maybe displaying it on a dedicated screen (think of being in a air traffic control tower, maybe?).
Shiny! Pretty graphs… showing useful information
Installation is somewhat easy (it could be easier, like maybe via apt-get or yum). Support diagnostics are interesting enough, it really does remind me of the sysreport utility in Red Hat/Fedora. It talks to 5.0.x and 5.1.x seamlessly, it doesn’t care what OS they’re on, and I’m unsure if the agent runs against say an older MySQL (though I don’t see why not).
The marketing materials on the Web don’t do enough justice for this useful tool. I wish there was an online demo of sorts or maybe the user manual was placed online, or just way more screenshots. Failing which, give the 30-day Enterprise Trial a go. Yes, Enterprise Monitor is not free :( I signed up a couple of days ago, spent about five minutes signing up (three email exchanges! Highly complicated), and got access to everything Enterprise-y.
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