Sentinel Overview

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 Release 7 offers 2 distinct editions of the product, each designed to address specific needs.

Sentinel™ — Performance Management Option (“PMO”) Highlights

Server performance is the key factor in maintaining database availability. Sentinel™ — Performance Management Option (“PMO”) 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 to keep it tuned for optimal performance. It helps pinpoint the underlying causes of performance bottlenecks and resources contention issues for fast and efficient resolution of database availability problems. Some of Sentinel™ — PMO edition's key benefits and features 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.

In short, Sentinel™ — PMO edition helps keep IBM Informix® data servers performing at peak levels and efficiently resolve database availability problems before they occur and adversely impact end users.

Sentinel™ — Change Management Option (“CMO”) Highlights

In a world where software changes in various strata and components occur constantly, it is vitally important to extend the limits of configuration change management and control to databases. The daily functions of making changes to the database configurations are costly in terms of the hours invested locating and rectifying malfunctions. Maintenance windows, development efforts, software testing and support functions are impaired by inability to manage multiple versions of a given database, whether they are in the development, testing or production environments.

Sentinel™ — Change Management Option (“CMO”) edition provides an integrated solution for database administrators and application developers to simplify and automate database configuration change management to assure system's availability, performance and compliance. It enables database professionals to quickly and easily:

  • Capture and version database definitions in baselines
  • Compare databases or baselines to track changes
  • Reverse engineer object or schema definitions
  • Roll-out, roll-back and recover lost or damaged database objects
  • Support efficent team development of databases

In short, Sentinel™ — CMO edition provides robust management and control infrastructure that helps keep changes to your IBM Informix® databases up to date, adhere to approved design baselines and resolve database configuration problems before they occur and adversely impact system availability.