SolarWinds Patch Manager & Orion Platform Integration – Part 2

This is the concluding part of our article on how to integrate SolarWinds® Patch Manager with SolarWinds.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is an agentless database monitoring tool that allows diagnosing and tuning performance issues on different types of relational databases including SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and DB2. DPA is a standalone application but it can easily be integrated with Orion platform to allow reporting and alerting and with strong information integration with the SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) and SolarWinds Storage Resource Monitor (SRM) modules to improve visibility and to reach the root cause of an issue efficiently.

I would like to give information on how to integrate DPA with Orion platform briefly and then describe the management of relationships between DPA database instances and SAM applications or SRM storage LUNs. Lastly, I want to describe out-of-the-box views on Orion Platform and to demonstrate the single pane of glass approach on Orion platform to combine multiple DPA instances and to combine different modules of SolarWinds.

 

Database Performance Analyzer and Orion Platform Integration Configuration

To integrate DPA with Orion Server, the DPA integration should be installed on Orion server, which if you have SAM v6.2.1 and later version, it is a default inclusion within the installation.

To configure integration; click “Database Performance Analyzer” on Settings page under “Product Specific Settings” part. Then click on “Manage DPA Servers” link under “DPA Integration”. On this page you will see this button to add your DPA server:

Then you will see the form below and you should fill DPA server information and click on “INTEGRATE” button:

When integration completes, you will see your DPA server in the list. You can add more DPA servers if you have more than one.

The next thing that should be done is adding relationships for your databases.. You should click on “Manage Relationships” link under “DPA Integration” on “Database Performance Analyzer” page. You will see the page below with 3 tabs; Database Instances, Client Applications and Storage Objects.

Database Instances tab is auto-populated, when you integrate your DPA with your Orion platform, relationships between database instances on DPA and Orion SAM applications assigned to database nodes are created automatically. If this is not complete or not fully accurate, you can click on “Add DPA Database Instance” button to connect to your DPA directly and create new database instance monitoring definition. Or you can click on “Find New Relationship” button to rediscover and auto-populate relationships. It is also possible to edit or remove esisting relationships using buttons under Actions column. We strongly recommend that your DPA database instances should be mapped to AppInsight for SQL applications for these nodes.

Client applications tab is initially empty. You should click on “Find New Relationships” to see discovered relationships and select proper ones. It is important to map correct client applications to the related database instances:

If you do not see your client applications in this list, then you can add them using “Define New Relationship” button. You should select the SAM application and then the related DPA database instance respectively. As a result, you will see your selected relationships:

Storage Objects tab allows us to create relationships between DPA database instances and SRM storage LUNs. These relationships should be created manually by clicking on “Define New Relationship” button and selecting database instance and storage LUN respectively.

Orion Views for Databases:

After successfully integrating DPA with Orion platform, it is possible to see data from DPA on “Databases Summary” view that can be reached from “My Dashboards” -> “Databases” menu item:

If you have one DPA server then you will see the data from this DPA server, if you have multiple DPA servers then you will see combined data from your DPA servers on this view.

The Database Instances resource shows data from DPA database instances and related SAM AppInsight for SQL applications. Wait, Query, CPU, Memory, Disk and Session columns are fed from DPA and instance status information is collected from SAM AppInsight for SQL application.

“Instances with the Highest Wait Time” chart shows daily wait time for database instances and it is beneficial to compare database instances and detect anomalies.

“Applications Using My Databases” shows the status of the client applications that are defined in client application relationships.

“Advisors from Databases with the Highest Wait Time” resource shows the most expensive queries and shows advice to decrease execution time for these queries that would improve database performance significantly.

If you click on a database instance on any chart or on “Database Instances” source, you will see the “DB Performance” tab of the related AppInsight for SQL application view. All the data on this view comes from DPA and it allows you to see performance statistics for this database with query advisors and client applications.

If you click on chart legends on “Database Response Time” resource or “Show Blocking Sessions” link on Blockers resource or any Advisor Message on “Advisors” resource, a new tab opens and details are shown on DPA interface as below:

This is a very powerful and smooth transition from Orion Platform to the DPA interface as the user does not need to login DPA and sees the data that he or she interested at one step.

As I mentioned before, “Applications Using My Databases” resource shows the client applications of the database instance and if you click on any of the client applications, “Database Response Time (Client)” resource appears at the top of the application page which shows a detailed chart of the database instance used by the application.