Sentinel™
Server performance is the key factor in maintaining database availability. Poor performance of mission-critical database applications means lost revenue and business opportunities. A substantial part of managing database infrastructure involves performing regular administration tasks, responding to unexpected system events and keeping your IBM Informix® data servers tuned for optimal performance.
Sentinel™ - Performance Edition provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use issue discovery, analysis and response automation solution that enables rapid identification and remediation of database performance problems in your IBM Informix® data servers’ environment. Its powerful, agent-less multiplatform client-server architecture is easy to deploy as a Microsoft Windows service or UNIX/LINUX background process. Sentinel™ helps pinpoint the underlying causes of performance bottlenecks and resources contention issues for fast and efficient resolution of database availability problems before they occur and seriously impact end users. Some of the key benefits of Sentinel™ are:
- Provides over 160 real-time operational parameters measurements to automate not only 24 x 7 monitoring of IBM Informix® data servers, but also the underlying host systems on which they reside.
- Enables setting a baseline for normal operation as well as flexible, multi-thresholds alerts to provide proactive user notification of performance degradation problems and trigger execution of autonomic responses to data server anomaly events.
- Performs dynamic capture of SQL statements running on data servers, based on user login name, client host, Informix session ID, or SQL statements execution statistics.
- Collects performance parameters time-series data, alert events and captured SQL statements in a highly configurable integrated repository for short-term diagnostics or future analysis and planning purposes.
- Helps database professionals keep data servers running at peak levels with an extensive assortment of analytical tools to gain deeper understanding of issues that affect database performance and availability.
- Provides comprehensive facilities for executing regularly scheduled data server maintenance and administration tasks.
Sentinel™, together with Server Studio™, provide wide-ranging functionality to support your organization’s vital IBM Informix® databases — from initial design, development and testing, all the way through to production deployment and successful operational service.
Highlights
Sentinel™ — Performance Edition provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use issue discovery, analysis and response automation solution that enables rapid identification and remediation of database performance problems in your IBM Informix® data servers’ environment. With this powerful multiplatform agent-less tool, database professionals can quickly:
- automate wide-ranging 24 x 7 monitoring of data servers' operations in real time
- execute regularly scheduled data server maintenance and administration tasks
- enable flexible alerting to provide proactive notification of performance degradation problems
- manage scenarios for autonomic responses to server anomaly events
In short, Sentinel™ helps keep IBM Informix® data servers performing at peak levels and efficiently resolve database availability problems before they occur and adversely impact end users.
Key Features
Performance Monitors
Sentinel™ provides over 160 real-time operational parameters measurements to automate not only 24 x 7 monitoring of IBM Informix® data servers, but also the underlying host systems on which they reside. A Performance Monitor is a user-defined named collection of performance measurement sensors (or probes) such as: a table I/O, CPU utilization, excessive locks and waits, paging-out rate and the I/O transfer rates for the various system disks, related event alert conditions, object filters and real-time graph definitions. Each sensor within a Performance Monitor can have its own definition of the sampling rate interval, whether to store its collected time-series data in the repository, alert condition thresholds for notifying users of performance problems and optional triggering of predefined autonomic remedial tasks.
SQL Capture
The SQL Capture is specialized Sentinel™ monitor that provides dynamic retrieval of SQL statements executing on the IBM Informix® data server. It can capture running SQL statements based on user login name, client host, Informix session ID, or SQL statements execution statistics such as estimated cost, estimated number of retrieved rows or number of sequential scans. Captured SQL statements are recorded in the Sentinel™ repository for review or subsequent tuning and optimization in the Server Studio's Query Execution Plan Analyzer which can automatically examine effectiveness of the execution plan selected by the data server’s query optimizer.
Server Event Management
Event Alerts provide a mechanism for proactive user notification when one or multiple data server performance parameters exceed user-defined threshold levels or the monitored database instance goes off-line. Each user-defined Event Alert has its own severity level, a list of notification methods (via email, mobile phone or pager text messages) and an optional trigger to execute autonomic action or task in response to alert event occurrence. In addition to Alerts defined as part of Performance Monitors, Sentinel™ also provides task-level alerts that provide user notification when scheduled Automation Tasks or alert-triggered autonomic response actions fail. All Alert Events are logged in the Sentinel™ repository for purposes of analysis and planning.
Task Automation
Sentinel™ provides powerful centralized facilities for automating administration, maintenance and event response management of the IBM Informix® data servers’ environment. An Automation Task is a user-defined executable action in a form of either an OS-level command or SQL script that can perform a useful task, such as a database backup, run UPDATE STATISTICS, or execute any existing administration script. Sentinel™ can execute simultaneously several scheduled or one-time Automation Tasks on one or multiple target servers. A specific set of remedial actions can be predefined by the user to provide autonomic response to the data server anomaly events detected by the Performance Monitors. Each Automation Task’s execution history along with its outputs is logged in the Sentinel™ repository for subsequent review and analysis.
Performance Diagnostics
Sentinel Console contained in either the Enterprise or Suite Editions of Server Studio™ provides an extensive array of sophisticated diagnostics tools for examination of performance data sets stored in the Sentinel™ repository. Collected measurements data is presented either as multi-parameter time-series charts or hourly, daily or monthly histograms to perform diagnostic analysis and resource-utilization profiling of the IBM Informix® data server. Performance data sets can be also exported for external analysis.
Sentinel™ runs on most systems that have a Microsoft Windows, UNIX or Linux operating system. We recommend a minimum of 125MB of disk space, 128MB of memory and one CPU. Installations employing continuous collection of IBM Informix® data servers' performance matrix may require larger disk space to accommodate time-series data repository. Sentinel™ requires Sun Microsystems' Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) Version 1.5.0 or a compatible runtime environment to operate.
Please note: The Sentinel Console provided in either the Enterprise or Suite Editions of Server Studio™ is required for administration and management of the Sentinel™ server. Multiple Sentinel™ servers may be controlled from a single Sentinel Console.
Supported Database Servers
- IBM Informix® Dynamic Server (IDS) V.7.x, V.9.x, V.10.X and V.11.X
Host Computer Platforms
| Operating System | Software | Hardware |
| AIX | 32-bit, Version 5.1 and above | Power |
| HP-UX | 32-bit, Version 11 and above | PA-RISC |
| Linux | Linux Kernel 2.2.12 and above | Intel or AMD 32-bit |
| Solaris | 32-bit, Version 2.6 and above | Sparc (from Sun and Fujitsu-Siemens) |
| Windows NT | 32-bit, Service Pack 6 or later | Intel or AMD 32-bit |
| Windows 2000 | 32-bit, Service Pack 4 or later | Intel or AMD 32-bit |
| Windows XP | 32-bit, Service Pack 2 or later | Intel or AMD 32-bit |
| Windows Server 2003 | 32-bit, Service Pack 1 or later | Intel or AMD 32-bit |
| Other | Any operating system compatible with Sun Microsystems' Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) Version 1.5.0 runtime environment. |
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