Sybase Monitoring and Management Tool

What is Sybase?

Sybase was a commercial database server company known for its Sybase ASE relational database offering (previously named Sybase SQL Server). Sybase databases are designed to leverage the benefits of in-memory capabilities to manage and process vast amounts of data from large numbers of users, keep response times to a minimum, and deliver high performance. This makes Sybase ASE servers especially useful for supporting transaction-based applications where high performance and global availability are crucial.

In 2010, SAP acquired Sybase and discontinued the name Sybase ASE in 2014.

What to monitor in a Sybase database

A common goal of Sybase monitoring is to optimize and proactively prevent issues, helping you maximize system uptime and performance for each device and server. Key performance metrics to track for Sybase include:

• CPU utilization: This measures the percentage of CPU usage by Sybase instance.
• Disk I/O: Sybase monitoring tools can provide granular insight into the total I/Os, reads, and writes per second per Sybase server.
• Concurrency: Sybase monitoring tools can measure the number of active and blocked sessions.
• Network: Connection and transactions statistics for the number of bytes sent and received every second.
• Memory usage: Measure the buffer cache hit ratio to identify the rate Sybase finds necessary data blocks in memory instead of reading from disk and procedure cache hit ratio to determine what percentage Sybase find an available plan in the cache.

How do Sybase monitoring tools work?

Sybase database monitoring tools are designed to transform performance metrics into easy-to-read, actionable insights, so you can gain a deeper understanding of Sybase performance by continuously providing:

• Database availability monitoring: Sybase database monitoring tools can provide visibility into status and wait time. They can issue alerts associated with your SQL Server availability groups, as well as the availability of individual database instances.
• Database queries monitoring and tuning possibilities: Use Sybase monitoring tools to perform SQL statement analysis to achieve optimal database performance. Sybase tool performance monitoring helps to identify problematic queries and can even provide options for tuning those queries, so you can resolve the problem before it impacts system performance and end users.
• Issues alerting: Monitoring device health information can also help you establish baseline parameters for optimal Sybase performance. If key performance metrics reach or surpass critical thresholds, you’ll be notified right away.
• Historical health data monitoring: It’s useful to have insight into past problems, baselines based on how your database performs over time, and other historical metrics. Tools with automation capabilities can also use this historical health data to identify recurring issues and proactively maintain your systems to minimize service interruptions.

How can DPA be used to monitor Sybase?

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is built to be a comprehensive database monitoring tool with robust Sybase monitoring features. DPA’s Sybase database monitoring tools can help you identify performance bottlenecks with the ability to check if high-demand applications meet appropriate service levels, while simultaneously helping you reduce operating expenses by pointing the potential for optimizing Sybase databases rather than expanding hardware resources.

The Sybase monitoring dashboard in DPA allows you to monitor availability and performance in real time for each Sybase ASE database server. By monitoring granular performance and transactional data about individual queries and statements, DPA can help shine a light on what’s really causing performance issues. This helps you pinpoint and troubleshoot faster and resolve issues before they affect end users. DPA also allows you to configure acceptable performance ranges for each database server, then collects performance metrics directly from the Sybase database instance.

The Sybase monitoring software in DPA can be configured to auto-generate and deliver notifications to admins, IT managers, technicians, or other stakeholders when key parameters exceed critical thresholds. DPA is built to analyze performance metrics for signs of abnormalities to help you identify developing issues or problematic patterns. Automated remediation solutions (including an easy-to-use scripting wizard) can help further increase your productivity by eliminating the need for manual intervention when routine maintenance issues are detected.

DPA’s continuous, round-the-clock Sybase monitoring can allow you to find and resolve active performance bottlenecks by drilling down to the specific instance-level resources and uncovering what’s actually causing the problem—whether it’s excessive CPU utilization or spikes and drop-offs in total system I/Os. If a database is poorly or inefficiently designed, it could lead to problems with locking. Sybase could also be experiencing internal issues, which can create waits for latches and data buffers.

DPA allows you to review recent activity and performance data, which can make it easier to investigate historical or long-term performance issues that would otherwise be hard to track through real-time metrics monitoring alone.

DPA allows you to monitor Sybase ASE from a single installation of the program, without the need for additional client software. The DPA web console includes a SQL Stats Tuning Assistant that updates the DPA message log each hour based on performance metrics to indicate whether query tuning is recommended. The Sybase tool performance monitoring features included in DPA also enable you track every connection to the Sybase ASE server based on connection state—which often proves useful for identifying root-blockers, or the queries preventing other queries from being able to run.

DPA’s reporting features are designed to translate performance information into easy-to-parse charts and reports, giving you what you need to resolve issues based on data from your own Sybase ASE servers. DPA’s Sybase database monitoring tools can help you refine and optimize database performance over time and are useful for capacity planning by providing historical baselines for resource utilization.