Overview
The DBMSys Platform collects data from multiple OS and database environments to provide deep insight into your data infrastructure. It is designed to help you develop a business case for an upgrade, consolidation or move to the cloud. Use DBMSys as a compass for your organization’s upgrade path while verifying that servers conform to best practices.
DBMSys collects basic metrics such as memory, CPU, and storage size together with software versions and performance over time for all your computers, databases, and applications from one or more central locations without the need to install agents on every computer.
Discover. Collect. Analyze.
Get the most comprehensive analysis of your database landscape to make informed decisions regarding database upgrades, consolidation or move to the cloud. DB Best developed DBMSys to provide our customers with high-quality data-driven recommendations on how to optimize their computer and database environments, including but not limited to:
- Modernization
- Consolidation and virtualization
- Migration to another platform
- Migration to the cloud
Watch how our DBMSys platform can make your database systems healthy over time for both on-premises and in the cloud.
Brands that trust DBMSys
DBMsys Platform Essentials
The Microsoft MAP Toolkit is good for scanning systems and providing a snapshot of some system metrics. However, this toolkit doesn’t provide data over time to understand peak workload requirements and storage capacity needs.
DBMSys platform turns monitoring on its head. DBMSys not only helps with monitoring your environment for capacity needs. In addition, DBMSys provides data over time, which is needed to make informed business choices on current and future plans for scalability, flexibility, and increased ROI
You can use the DBMSys platform for real-time database monitoring as well as database management services. This platform provides you with instant alerts on the dashboard and with convenient notifications. In addition, DBMSys discovers the right path for database optimization and modernization for both on-premises and in the cloud.
Here are the top five reasons we urge our clients to consider using DBMSys for their environment planning.
Capture Capacity
DBMSys platform was designed to capture, process, report, and guide automation decisions based on metadata from multiple platform environments. DBMSys uses an agentless central engine to collect varying kinds of data, both structured and unstructured, on nearly any infrastructure. The platforms and collection types covered by DBMSys expand regularly.
Examples of what DBMSys captures include:
- Operating System information
- Database-instance/Web Servers/Exchange/Active Directory level specific information
- Performance data
- Activity logs
Note: DBMSYS does not access the content of any user table. All information collected by the application is available on the application’s database for review and auditing by the customer.
Running the Options
With the database server and hardware profile, operating system information, and metadata in hand, our solution architects can determine the risk to your business based on product supportability and new-feature adoption. Our first consideration is to look for databases and servers running on versions of the operating system or database server that are out of support or on extended support. These servers represent a business risk that you need to address. We also look for software running on aging servers.
Technology has advanced over the years with faster CPUs, greater memory capacity, and new storage technologies like flash-based solid-state drives. These servers are great candidates for consolidation and virtualization (Hyper-V and VMWare ESXi) on a modern host server or for moving to the cloud. The analysis also looks at database usage to determine if a server is a candidate for decommissioning or for scaling down in a consolidated platform due to its lack of use.
DBMSys can also collect data from Oracle database servers to assess the possibility of migrating from Oracle to another database platform like SQL Server.
Database optimization for the cloud (Azure, AWS, GCP)
DMBSys includes additional algorithms to compute the optimum configuration for moving the database applications to the cloud. You can choose either Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environment.
By analyzing the workload usage data, DBMSys can recommend specific Azure, AWS, or GCP VM sizes that match up with the usage data to determine if a database instance should be on a single VM or have multiple instances on a single VM. DBMSys can also compute the estimated monthly costs using the latest billing information from Azure, AWS, or GCP.
Building the financial model
Building a financial model without current environmental metadata can be a daunting task. DBMSys helps develop a model by showing a breakdown of the current state and by comparing the possible solutions that have been predetermined from the client’s guidance.
Some of the possible scenarios that can be compared include:
- Current state — do nothing
- Move existing servers to Azure, AWS, or GCP virtual machines with or without consolidation
- Perform Consolidation among existing on-premises servers
- Virtualize existing on-premises servers to Hyper-V/VMware
We seek to empower our customers with their data to help make the best business decisions possible regarding their future state architecture. Our customers must have a full understanding of the overall cost model with input from DBMSys and our engineers.
Many of our customers consider Azure Database Managed Instances as the target destination for their database upgrade or migration. DBMSys platform supports Azure DBMI and provides a comprehensive financial estimate of this type of database modernization.
With our exclusive Data Management Optimization offer, you can take full advantage of your new database environment within a short time.
Health monitoring and keeping systems running, patched, and updated
With DBMSys, we can provide database health monitoring, upgrading, and patching all through one platform. DBMSys can also be used for many other reporting and environmental tasks that require a real-time monitoring system to help guide the decision-making process.
We deploy DBMSys for long-term engagements to assist with database monitoring and database optimization. In addition, DBMSys provides us with system status and other business-rule requirements. DBMSys displays metadata on a single health dashboard.
Also, DBMSys takes real-time alerts, events, and metadata and uses predefined business rules to create targeted alerts and actions. This gives your infrastructure and database teams greater control over the environment.
DBMSys also allows for automating event monitoring. Particularly, we created an extensive list of events based on our expert’s knowledge and industry best practices. DBMSys checks on the pre-defined schedule and sends out notifications in case of an alert. Also, DBMSys can send reminders if the alert was not properly addressed.
Currently, we use the DBMSys platform for database monitoring in various projects with our customers. As the developers of this platform, we can easily customize it to meet the customer’s needs.
How does it work
DBMSys leverages your environmental data to allow for informed business rules as well as data-guided estimates and upgrades or migration paths. In order to get the best value from DBMSys, we like to have our engineers leverage it as part of our existing services and solutions.
DBMSys provides all the metadata, but we also add our own “Special Sauce:” the vast experience of our architects as consultants.
Find the architecture diagram of the DBMSys platform below.
This is how the DBMSys platform works.
Initial setup and discovery
Many of our customers have a weak understanding of their data environment and IT infrastructure. Over the years their systems have grown, and the changes may not have been properly documented. However, this knowledge is vital for the future-state architectural design session.
That is why DB Best developed the DBMSys platform which helps analyze customer’s data infrastructure. DBMSys platform is an agentless software, which installs on a virtual machine in the customer’s environment and allows for collecting data from multiple environments.
After installation, the DBMSys platform automatically scans the data environment to discover database servers, operating systems, and other infrastructure elements. Manual help may be required to grant DBMSys access rights to specific items in your environment. Overall, the client-side discovery module has a simple and intuitive graphic user interface.
Data collection
After completing the setup, DBMSys starts gathering information about your data environment. It connects to your servers, PCs, and databases to capture key performance metrics in real-time. These include IOPS, memory, processor, disk usage, etc. DBMSys also discovers your existing licenses and provides you with suggestions on reducing the number of licenses thus lowering the maintenance costs.
Typically, we recommend running DBMSys data collector for at least 2 weeks. However, the longer DBMSys runs in the data collection mode the better quality of results you can expect. The reason behind this is that in this way you can discover usage peaks that can be seasonal or related to certain days of the month. Also, this helps to discover the usage patterns, which allow for better optimization decisions.
Data audit and upload
At the end of the data collection period, DBMSys uses a secure connection to upload collected data to the server. At this point, the customer can audit the collected data. The screenshot below shows an example of the report you get after running DBMSys.
Data analysis
The server-side of the DBMSys platform analyzes this uploaded data to determine how to optimize the customer’s system or move it to the cloud. DBMSys delivers analytical reports that cover the following opportunities:
- Technical possibilities of migration to the cloud
- Optimal format for migration to the cloud
- Servers consolidation, modernization or upgrade
DBMSys also emphasizes the financial side of your optimization efforts. DBMSys reports provide you with valuable up-to-date financial information about potential expenses for any of the proposed modernization opportunities.
This table shows the proposed cloud architecture for the customer infrastructure: source server name, cloud instance type, the price per month, the number of processor cores, virtual cores, CPU score and memory available in the cloud instance.
An important step here is a good understanding of business needs and modernization goals. So, using DBMsys delivers great results in tight cooperation between the customer and the DB Best team.
If you would like to know more about DBMSys and how DB Best can better leverage your own environments metadata to help better inform your decision-makers, contact us. No company is too small or too large for what DB Best can offer with DBMSys and our experienced team of subject matter experts (SMEs). Using DBMSys as a basis for our exclusive Data Management Optimization offer will help discover the right modernization path for your data environment.
Supported platforms
DBMSys platform supports the following databases, cloud platforms, and operating systems. However, as the developers of the DBMSys platform, we can add support for any database platform.
Supported source database platforms
- Microsoft SQL Server 2019, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008, 2008 R2, 2005, 2000
- Oracle Database 12c, 11g, 10g, 9i
- MySQL 5.7, 5.6, 5.5, 5.1
- PostgreSQL 11, 10, 9
Supported target cloud platforms
Supported operating systems
- Windows Server 2016, 2012 R2, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008
- Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 and higher
- CentOS 6.0 and higher
- Ubuntu 10.0 and higher
- Oracle Solaris 11.0 and higher
- IBM AIX 7.1 and higher
Learn more
Blog posts
To see how we’ve applied DBMSys as part of our practice and how customers have benefitted from our DB Best DBMSys platform, check out the following blog posts.
Upgrade and modernization projects for SQL Server should not be taken lightly. You might want to take advantage of the latest versions of SQL Server 2016. You might need to take your a...
Our customer needed a way to upgrade their unsupported SQL Server databases to newer versions of SQL Server. The major challenge was that they didn’t have visibility into their syste...
A major American provider of global eCommerce solutions was looking for a way to upgrade their extensive data processing system. We provided them with visibility into their system and ...
A major Health Department was running a data system that has been expanding over the years. Eventually, they ended up with a highly outdated and inefficient environment with thousands ...
One of our public sector customers was using a distributed SQL Server 2016 database system and was considering an upgrade to unite the servers in one data center, or even a move to the...
One of the largest US national energy suppliers wanted to upgrade their SQL Server system and deploy it on VMware. As a consulting partner, we offered a new architecture for their vir...
Reference data sheet
Check out our data sheets on how DBMSys can work for you to get the most value from your SQL Server deployments and keep them running within your service level agreements and policies.
DB Best has five key areas we focus on when proposing our customized modernization map. Our data-centric approach involves an in-depth look at your organization's data platform so w...
Mission-critical systems drive your business, yet most organizations lack the IT expertise or resources to maximize system performance and achieve greater service availability, complia...
Are you looking for the most comprehensive analysis of your database landscape? Do you want to make informed decisions regarding database upgrades, consolidation or move to the cloud? ...