Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Microservice architectures are everywhere these days. Even internal enterprise applications—which have typically been structured as self-contained monoliths—are now being designed using a microservices architecture. There are definite advantages to a microservices architecture. Breaking an application into discrete, independent chunks—basically mini apps—gives you enormous flexibility. But this flexibility dramatically increases complexity, especially when things go wrong.

One of the most common questions database professionals are asked by their systems and virtual machine (VM) administrators is “Why does the database server need so much memory?” You’ll get a more detailed answer to that question later in this post, but it’s important to understand a database engine is almost like a server within a server.

IT is ultimately about providing services to end users, and the IT help desk plays a critical role in this effort. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a major uptick in the number of inquiries fielded through the IT help desk in 2020—and this trend will extend into 2021 and beyond.

Making your customers happy is essential in any industry, but it’s imperative for online businesses because the competition is only a few clicks away. If you want your customers to be satisfied, providing them a great user experience is essential. This is easier said than done, however. There are many approaches for organizations wanting to improve their user experience, and picking the right one can become overwhelming. We’re here to help.

Understanding modern software applications isn’t just a question of what; it’s also a question of why. Why do we choose to use a particular technology? How does that technology serve the overall business needs? And when you have a problem, how do you figure out what’s wrong? If you’re in the position of trying to understand a modern software application for the first time, these questions can seem unanswerable.

The old saying goes like this: “If you don’t measure it, you can’t fix or improve it.” This reflects the obvious notion you can’t measure what you don’t monitor. But this isn’t where the story ends—it’s vitally important to choose, carefully and deliberately, what one measures and monitors. It’s also important to understand metrics in the overall context of an organization’s environment and goals.

Although writing better queries and building the right indexes are important parts of improving database performance, building clear database documentation can also contribute to this goal by helping you understand your database architecture. Painting a clear picture of the structure of your database gives you insight into your data flows and helps you identify redundant data and clarify business processes.

Given the overwhelming importance of data to organizations, anything they can do to speed up troubleshooting problems in the databases they use is of great value. If a company can speed up or avoid troubleshooting, it frees up time they can invest in doing and building more with their data. Careful attention to database query construction and execution also pays similar dividends, as improved database performance helps organizations get more done faster.

There are plenty of ways to gain insights on website availability and performance, from setting up complex monitoring agents to browsing through real-time logs. Few services are as straightforward and robust as SolarWinds® Pingdom®. Pingdom lets you set up checks for your website including uptime, page speed, and user interactions. It then collates the results in a dashboard for you to visualize.

In this enterprise cost containment series, we’ve tackled a range of topics from cloud to professional services and more. Now, I want to dive into the topic you may have expected us to cover from the start: monitoring. After all, at SolarWinds, we create monitoring software. The goal of this post is not to present or sell software, though. It’s our intention to help you have conversations with management and stakeholders—no matter the monitoring you use.