What to monitor for Sybase?

[Kenneth Leung_2]

My boss requested to use the HP Openview Operation (OVO) to monitor our Sybase servers. From a DBA's point of view, could anyone suggest what to monitor for Sybase servers? Please help. Many thanks.

[eran maor]

Hi

i m not a Sybase admin. but why not to use the DBSPI of the ovo to do it ?

the DBSPI it a software ( that you need to buy ) that is doing all the work that you are talking about , i thing that it is much easeir to do then to try to monitor the Sybase with template that you will write .

you can also monitor any database that you want ( like oracle , SQL and others )

go to www.openview.hp.com to see more info

[Edgar_16 · Accepted solution]

Basically, all you need to monitor is a process owned by Sybase DBA called "dataserver". It looks something like this:

# ps -fu $SYBASE_DBA |grep "/opt/sybase/*/dataserver -s $INSTANCE"

where $SYBASE_DBA is the DBA username and $INSTANCE is the instance name.

P.S: You need at least two dataserver proc per instance.

[Mobeen_1]

Kenneth,
I am not sure if your question is directed on finding out what softwares are available for monitoring Sybase or if what components of the Sybase environment can be monitored. I shall briefly touch on both and you let us know if any additional information is required

1. S/W Available for Monitoring Sybase
--------------------------------------
We have been using BMC Patrol for Sybase and it works wonderfully well. This monitoring tool goes into depth and provides you with lot of flexibility in setting up your monitoring environment. In fact you can even set some actions to be performed when an event if triggered.

If you are looking at some low level of monitoring without having to spend any $$, then Sybase's own tool SQL Advantage or Sybase Central (i don't remember which one) should be able to do that.

2. What can be monitored in a Sybase ASE
----------------------------------------
Some of the components like the following can be monitored in Sybase
a. The log thresholds
b. /DUMP file system
c. DBVolume growth
d. DB going into log suspend mode
e. Monitor for any known/predefined errors
in the sybase error log
f. No. of connections
g. No. of locks (many of the sp_configure)
parameters and
h. Infact you can monitor almost everything

Let me know if you have any specific questions

regards
Mobeen

[Kenneth Leung_2]

Due to budget issue, my company will only use the OVO to monitor our sybase server instead of using DBSPI or BMC patrol.

Anyway, I will first start the monitoring with the "dataserver" process & the sybase error logfile. The monitoring items suggested by Mobeen are useful to me, but it will take much time to develop the monitoring script required.

Many thanks