You serious, Clark?
Imagine this.... you're hosting a Holiday Party...and the phone rings. You answer and the person on the other end says with a tense voice, "I'm sorry but we will be unable to deliver your beer, wine, ...
Monitor Postgres Disk Space Usage with Foglight
Many things can happen if the database runs out of disk space. None of them are good. DBAs understand that it is essential to monitor database disk space so that critical business processes are uninte...
Optimize Postgres Query Performance with Foglight
One of the primary tasks of any DBA is to find and optimize poorly performing queries. This is not a trivial job as often times there is too much data to sort through and pinpoint problems. Quest’s Fo...
Tune Your Queries with SQL Optimizer (Pt 1)
One of the many ways to improve database performance is to tune SQL queries running in your environment. Two primary reasons for tuning are: Minimize Response Time – End users who are interacting wit...
Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise Tip: Reduce Noise Using Planned Outages
Naturally, it's VERY important to know when things are going wrong with our monitored instances. What's not helpful is the dreaded "False Positive." You know the scenario I'm about to describe. It's 0...
“License and Registration, please…” Spotlight
So, you’ve downloaded and installed an evaluation of Spotlight Enterprise. Good news…it comes with a 30-day evaluation license key! Spotlight is fully functional (not limited trial functionality). It ...
Customer Conversation: Diagnose SQL Server Instances in an Availability Group
I recently spoke to a user of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise who wanted to be able to drill into the individual SQL Server instances that are participating in an Availability Group. The customer h...
Customer Conversation: Backup Escalation in Litespeed for SQL Server
A customer recently asked me to clarify the option "Enable Backup Escalation" in Litespeed for SQL Server. The customer has been using Litespeed for a while so I was a bit surprised the question was a...
A General Guide to a Foglight for SQL Server Upgrade
Understand that this is a general, high-level guide outlining the steps you should expect to take during a Foglight for SQL Server upgrade. Since environments and upgrade circumstances are often diffe...
Customer Story: Using Foglight SQL PI to Detect Unauthorized User Activity
Let me be very clear when I say that I do not advertise Foglight for Databases as a security auditing or intrusion detection solution. What is interesting to me is a scenario described by a customer w...
Quest Customer Story: Sticking With What Works
In an earlier blog, I wrote about a company’s success with Quest’s flagship SQL Server monitoring and diagnostics solution – Spotlight Enterprise. The blog detailed a customer success story and reveal...
Refine Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise Alarms Using Key Values
In a previous post, I explained how to customize alarms in Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise. Recently, I had a customer inquire how he could refine the "Days Since Last Full Backup" alarm. He wanted...