Relational databases are still an important application component even in today’s modern application architectures. There is usually at least one relational database lurking somewhere within the overall application flow and understanding the behavior of these databases is major factor in rapidly troubleshooting application problems. In 2009, Amazon launched their RDS service which basically allows anyone to spin up a MySQL, Oracle, or MS-SQL instance whenever the urge strikes.

While this service is amazingly useful there are also some drawbacks:

1. You cannot login and access the underlying OS of your database instance. This means that you can’t use any agent based monitoring tools to get the visibility you really want.
2. The provided CloudWatch monitoring metrics are high level statistics and not helpful in troubleshooting SQL issues.

The good news is that you can monitor all of your Amazon RDS instances using AppDynamics for Databases (AppD4DB) and in this article I will show you how. If you’re unfamiliar with AppD4DB click here for an introduction.

Setting Up A Database Instance In RDS

Creating a new database instance in RDS is really simple.

Step 1, login to your Amazon AWS account and open the RDS interface.

Step 2, Initiate the “Launch a DB Instance” workflow.

Step 3, select the type of instance you want to launch. In this case we will use MySQL but I did test Oracle and MS-SQL too.

Step 4, fill in the appropriate instance details. Pay attention to the master user name and password as we will use those later when we create our monitoring configuration (although we could create a new user only for monitoring if we want).

Step 5, finish the RDS workflow. Notice I called the database “wordpress” as I will use it to host a WordPress instance. Also notice that we chose to use the “default” DB security group. You will need to access the security group settings after your new instance is created so that you allow access to the database from the internet. For the sake of testing I opened up my database to 0.0.0.0/0 (not shown in this workflow) which allows the entire internet to connect to my database if they have the credentials. You should be much more selective if you have a real database instance with production applications connected.

Step 6, wait for your instance to be created and watch for the “available” status. When you click on the database instance row you will see the details populate in the “Description” tab below. We will use the “Endpoint” information to connect AppD4DB to our new instance. (At this point you can also build the database structure and connect your application to your running instance.)

Monitor Your Database With AppD4DB

Step 1, enable database monitoring from the “Agent Manager” tab in AppD4DB. Notice we map RDS “Endpoint” to AppD4DB “Hostname or IP Address” and in this case we are using the RDS “Master Username” and “Master Password” for “Username” and “Password” in AppD4DB. Also, since Amazon does not allow any access to the associated OS (via SSH or any other method) we cannot enable OS monitoring.

Step 2, start your new database monitoring and use your application. Here is a screen grab showing a couple of slow SQL queries.

The Results

So here is what I found for each type of database offered by Amazon RDS.

• MySQL: Fully functional database monitoring.
• Oracle: Fully functional database monitoring.
• MS-SQL: All database monitoring functionality works except for File I/O Statistics. This means that we are 99% functional and capture everything else as expected including the ability to show SQL execution plans.

Amazon RDS makes it fast and easy to stand up MySQL, MS-SQL and Oracle databases. AppDynamics for Databases makes it fast and easy to monitor your RDS databases at the level required to solve your application and database problems. Sounds like a perfect match to me. Sign up for your free trial of AppD4DB and see for yourself today.

Amazon RDS, database monitoring, mssql, mysql, Oracle, Performance Monitoring

It’s been almost two years since I joined AppDynamics and it’s been one of the best career moves I’ve ever made. I used to work at a competitor, and quickly realized I was working for the wrong company. Sometimes you just have to trust your gut feeling when it comes to technology–you’ve either got a product that’s special or you don’t, and I know what it’s like to experience both feelings.

At AppDynamics the technology is definitely special, but I also joined a group of like-minded people who shared the same passion as I did for application monitoring. The no-compromise approach to figuring out new ways of doing things that couldn’t be done previously, along with a laser-focus on solving real world problems for customers, is pretty inspiring. Things are never perfect at any company but the passion to make our customers successful, and the will to win business professionally, is unique at AppDynamics. We really believe that enterprise software doesn’t have to suck, it should never be shelfware, and it should be affordable by everyone–which is one of the reasons why we created a free product AppDynamics Lite that now has over 100,000 users and our commercial product AppDynamics Pro is reasonably priced.

In just two years we’ve disrupted an application monitoring market that was previously dominated by expensive complex solutions that quite frankly sucked. This disruption was one of the reasons why Gartner recognized AppDynamics as a Leader in their 2012 APM Magic Quadrant, and we’ve only been selling our product for two years! This speaks volumes for what we’ve achieved in such a short period of time. What’s also great is that our customers are very vocal about their success; our case study page is packed with customer success stories, with several customers willing to publish actual ROI results from their AppDynamics deployments. How many real customer ROI stories have you read recently from any vendor? My guess is not many.

One online community that provides an accurate inside look at companies is Glassdoor.com. It basically lets employees rate different aspects of the company they work for, from compensation all the way through to culture and leadership. If you search for all the APM companies on Glassdoor.com that are currently recognized in the Gartner’s APM Magic Quadrant, here is what the top 10 looks like:

*Glassdoor ratings correct as of 1/10/2013

I’m pretty proud to work for a company where employees are very satisfied and give their CEO 100% approval. That says a lot about the success and leadership of the company–happy employees also means a happy place to work and trust me, this is pretty important when you spend most of your life at work!

One company that didn’t score well was Compuware. Only 38% of employees would recommend a friend and only 68% approve of their CEO. Not particularly encouraging when you need your employees to innovate, run through walls, and beat the competition. A hedge fund recently put an offer on the table to take Compuware private–let’s hope those guys can get the employees jazzed.

If you’re looking for the next challenge, cool technology and a great place to work, you should consider joining AppDynamics. We’ve got 21 positions currently open and we need great people to help scale the great company we’re building!

With customers like Netflix, Orbitz, Fox News, Vodafone and Yahoo you’ll experience the ins and outs of monitoring some of the largest applications in the world.

Oh, and you get to work with a superhero like me!

Appman.

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appdynamics, CA Wily, Compuware, Dynatrace, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Nastel, New Relic, OpNet, OpTier, Oracle, Quest Software, Sh#! APM Vendors Say

What happens when mission critical Java applications slow down or keep crashing in production? The vast majority of IT Operations (Ops) today bury their heads in log files. Why? because thats what they’ve been doing since IBM invented the mainframe. Diving into the weeds feels good, everyone feels productive looking at log entries, hoping that one will eventually explain the unexplainable. IT Ops may also look at system and network metrics which tell them how server resource and network bandwidth is being consumed. Again, looking at lots of metrics feels good but what is causing those server and network metrics to change in the first place? Answer: the application.

IT Ops monitor the infrastructure that applications run on, but they lack visibility of how applications actually work and utilize the infrastructure. To get this visibility, Ops must monitor the application run-time. A quick way to get started is to use the free tools that come with the application run-time. In the case of Java applications, both JConsole and VisualVM ship with the standard SDK and have proved popular choices for monitoring Java applications. When we built AppDynamics Lite we felt their was a void of free application monitoring solutions for IT Ops, the market had plenty of tools aimed at developers but many were just too verbose and intrusive for IT Ops to use in production. If we take a look at how JConsole, VisualVM and AppDynamics Lite compare, we’ll see just how different free application monitoring solutions can be.

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apm, appdynamics lite, application monitoring, Application Performance Management, Free application monitoring, Java Monitoring, JConsole, JVM, JVM Monitoring, Oracle, Oracle Java Monitoring, VisualVM