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Embarcadero Performance Center

Enterprise Database Availability and Performance Protection

Embarcadero Performance Center™ provides database professionals with an industrial-strength portal into complete performance management. By supplying an automated strategy for identifying problems that threaten the availability and performance of critical Oracle® , Sybase® , and Microsoft® databases, Embarcadero Performance Center ensures that relational database management systems enjoy maximum up time and exhibit performance that exceeds user expectations.

Embarcadero Performance Center is designed to integrate into a database administrator’s busy work schedule by offering methods to effectively monitor and control the performance of your databases. It quickly identifies performance problems throughout the enterprise, and helps database professionals prioritize their performance tuning workload.

Fast Problem Diagnosis

Higher volumes and more corporate databases make traditional techniques for diagnosing and troubleshooting performance problems obsolete. What database professionals need, instead, are clear and concise methods for ensuring the viability of every database they manage. Embarcadero Performance Center contains rich features for helping DBAs spot the kinds of performance issues that can impact an organization’s bottom line. Using the Enterprise Portal view, DBAs can:

• Observe Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server relational databases in a single view.
• Decipher, at a glance, which databases are up or down at any point in time.
• Spot Oracle Listeners that are malfunctioning and preventing client access to the database.
• Quickly find poorly performing databases with the Embarcadero Health Index and interrogate them in more detail to locate the exact cause of any problems.
• Locate databases with active problems.

Increased workloads, decreased numbers of DBAs, and shrinking application lifecycles mean less time for performance management. The Embarcadero Health Index is a single indicator that communicates theoverall performance level of every monitored database. By sampling critical statistics in the areas of memory, I/O, contention, space, network, objects, users, and SQL, Embarcadero Performance Center is able to quickly ascertain a database’s complete performance picture. The result is one statistic that can be used to determine how well each database is performing. Each Health Index for a database can be customized, so that individualized thresholds and measurements that apply to each unique database scenario can easily be established.

Embarcadero Performance Center supplies a single interface that allows DBAs to view all identified problems in every database they manage. Using the Alarm Center, DBAs can:

• Quickly pinpoint critical problems for their most visible databases.
• View key information regarding problems for all monitored databases in an easy-to-understand and navigate format.
• View all alarms for all databases regardless of platform, in the enterprise, or select only the databases/servers they wish to check.

To aid in problem identification and resolution, DBAs need to be able to quickly review the most critical statistics in every area of a database that affects performance. Embarcadero Performance Center provides this capability in its performance home page. For each database, DBAs are given a complete, one-stop shop for viewing statistical performance and availability indicators. Embarcadero Performance Center communicates any statistic out of line with predefined – or Embarcadero’s recommended – performance thresholds by highlighting it for easy identification. Drill down views enable DBAs to see into the center of any globally reported statistic.

Two things are needed to effectively guarantee the availability and performance of critical databases. The first is 24 x 7 coverage for the most visible databases in the enterprise, which allows problems to be proactively detected regardless of when they occur, and before they threaten a database’s health. The second is robust, real-time monitoring capabilities that allow DBAs to drill down into every detail of a database’s performance so that the root cause of any response problems can be located quickly and easily.

Unlike other solutions, Embarcadero Performance Center was designed from the ground up to accomplish both styles of performance analysis and protection. Embarcadero Performance Center enables DBAs to:

• Initiate an unattended, “lights out” monitoring schedule for early problem detection and notification.
• Collect and use critical statistics for historical analysis of performance levels.
• Monitor every aspect of a database’s performance in real time, using time-based graphical displays and up-to-the-minute statistical data.
• Quickly locate any problem in any database by color-coded performance indicators.
• Create blackout schedules that prohibit threshold checking and/or notifications.
• Dynamically stop and start monitoring a datasource using a stored procedure that can be embedded directly into nightly backup scripts.

In addition to notification of troublesome conditions, Embarcadero Performance Center can respond to database alarms by invoking a command line or SQL job to automatically remedy the situation – before it has a chance to affect the database in an adverse way.

While manually connecting to and switching between numerous databases for monitoring purposes may be difficult in other products, Embarcadero Performance Center enables DBAs to navigate to all important databases quickly, and pinpoint any problem on a global or individual database level. They can:

• Quickly move between different monitored databases and statistics, jumping to any performance home page and accompanying drill-down views with Internet browser-like navigation.
• Use tabbed displays to keep track of every database that’s being monitored in real time.
• Use color-coded indicators in the Database Explorer tree and all performance views to quickly identify problem databases and go to any problem statistic in the fastest possible manner.
• Define and share groups in the explorer tree to provide access to clients on other machines.

Embarcadero Performance Center includes a number of reports that are aimed at management levels and DBAs. These capabilities ensure that everyone responsible for critical application availability and performance stays current and informed. Features include:

• Enterprise reports that detail the global performance of all databases in an easy-to-understand format for CIOs, database managers, and DBAs.
• A “Worst Databases” report, which identifies the worst performing databases over a given time period.
• The ability to compare current performance to historical user-defined points in time.
• Export capabilities that make report data available to other analytical formats, like Microsoft® Excel.
  Ability to generate reports on a schedule.

Tuning and Performance Integration

Embarcadero Technologies provides a unified database administration and performance suite by supplying tight integration between Embarcadero Performance Center, DBArtisan, and Embarcadero SQL Tuner. Now you can work seamlessly among Embarcadero Technologies’ award-winning tools to quickly diagnose and correct problems that threaten the availability and performance of critical databases.

Expert Knowledge Included

Embarcadero Performance Center includes online expert guides that offer explanations for every statistic, including advice on how to interpret them. Expert guides offers tips and techniques that can help novice and intermediate users tune database performance to maximum performance. All explanations and advice are specific to RDBMS: Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server.

DBMS Support

Embarcadero Performance Center currently supports the following RDBMS platforms:

• Oracle 7.3.4 – 10i
• Sybase 11.9.2 – 12.5
• Microsoft® SQL Server 7.0 & 2000

System Requirements

Embarcadero Performance Center may monitor any datasource regardless of the chosen operating system platform. Embarcadero Performance Center requires the following:

Embarcadero Performance Center Server

• 60 MB of hard disk storage recommended
• 256 MB of RAM recommended
• Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), version 4.0 for Windows NT® , 5.0 for Windows 2000
  OR
  Apache Version 2.03
• Windows NT 4 with Service Pack 6 or higher Server
  OR
  NT 4 with Service Pack 6 or higher Workstation
  OR
  Windows® 2000
• OR
  Windows XP
• OR
  Windows® 2003

Database vendor-specific middleware for connectivity to repository and monitored datasources

Embarcadero Performance Center Client

• 30 MB of hard disk storage recommended
• 64 MB of RAM recommended
• Windows NT 4 with Service Pack 6 or higher Workstation
  OR
  Windows NT 4 with Service Pack 6 Server
  OR
  Windows 2000
  OR
  Windows 98
  OR
  Windows Millennium Edition
  OR
  Windows XP
  OR
  Windows 2003

Embarcadero Performance Center Repository

• Any Oracle database 7.3.4 - 10i
• Any Sybase database 11.9.2 – 12.5
• MS SQL Server 7 & 2000

Default storage space of 50 MB. However, larger database environments may require more storage space