Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Redgate Test Data Manager now ships as a Docker image. Pull it, run it, and you're in the product in minutes. For teams working with containers, this is the fastest way to get started.

Part 3, key insights from a fireside chat with Chris Yates. Read part 1 here, and part 2 here. Most database monitoring proof of concepts (POCs) answer the wrong questions. Here's how to structure a proof of concept that genuinely de-risks your vendor decision with the questions to ask during the process. A POC is often treated as the final hurdle in vendor evaluation, but too often, it becomes theatre. A guided tour of the flashiest features, run by one person, under unrealistic conditions.

If you've ever run an ALTER TABLE on a busy MySQL table in production, you know the feeling. The change is small. The risk isn't. Long-running table locks, queued writes, application timeouts, replication lag, a five-minute migration that turns into a half-hour incident review. We're shipping an integration that takes that anxiety out of the loop. Harness Database DevOps now supports Percona Toolkit for MySQL as part of Liquibase-based schema management.

Most development teams today build everything around Git, and deploy with GitOps principles. Code sits in version controlled environments, changes go through PRs, and deployments are handled through modern CI/CD. That part is pretty standard at this point, especially when using a modern DevOps platform like Harness.

The new Query Plan Compare feature in Redgate Monitor helps PostgreSQL DBAs see when the optimizer switches plans for the same query, and understand why, so they can diagnose sudden performance changes faster.

Observability in software is often framed as a choice between self-hosted and SaaS: manage it yourself, or pay a vendor to handle your data. Both self-hosted and SaaS approaches have their merits, but assuming you must choose one exclusively over the other leads to poor trade-offs: either overcommitting to an all-in-one SaaS despite spiraling costs, or fully self-hosting when it’s unnecessary.

Netdata has always collected database metrics: connections, throughput, replication lag, buffer cache hit ratios, and so on. These tell you that something is wrong, but they don’t tell you why. When your PostgreSQL response time spikes, the metric alone doesn’t tell you which query is responsible. For that, you’ve traditionally needed to SSH into the box, connect to the database, and run diagnostic queries manually. Or set up a separate database monitoring tool entirely.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in Amsterdam brought together about 13,500 attendees this year, the largest turnout yet. The size of the event showed just how much the cloud-native space has grown, and how central observability, platform engineering, and cost control have become. For VictoriaMetrics, this year’s event was a mix of talks, booth conversations, and a lot of direct feedback from users.

Following our 2025 updates, here we recap how VictoriaMetrics Anomaly Detection evolved in Q1 2026. Stay tuned for upcoming content on anomaly detection.

Part 2: Key insights from a fireside chat with Chris Yates. Read part 1 here. Choosing a database monitoring vendor isn't just about features. Once you’re confident that it’s time to reassess your database monitoring strategy, the natural instinct is to start comparing products. However, it’s vital to know how to assess vendor relationships, support quality, and product innovation before you sign anything.