BEACON TRAINING

At Beacon Training, we are proud of our exceptional staff and our consultants are experienced certified Oracle, Cisco, PMP and Microsoft professionals and knowledgeable experts who are dedicated to ensuring that our clients receive world-class support, training and consulting services. 

Beacon Training provides Certified consultants who are always available for all areas of support including  tuning, troubleshooting, migration and upgrades, patch application, design reviews and  requirements evaluation support. Our methodology involves conducting FREE Health Checks on you Databases. Check out our FREE Oracle and SQL Server Health Checks.
 
Oracle Health Checks

Our Oracle tuning experts have used the BEACON methodology to diagnose several Oracle databases and we can quickly locate and relieve database performance bottlenecks on the fly. Oracle Health Checks are a fast and easy way to ensure that your Oracle database is properly optimized, and we cover every inch of your database using the Beacon Training specialized health check methodology that has been developed over the past decade. 

It is not wise to risk your Oracle health check to an ordinary Oracle DBA.  Beacon Training offers a complete Oracle Database health check, aimed at ensuring that your mission-critical Oracle database is performing at optimal levels.

At a high level, here are broad areas to perform Oracle Database health checks

  • OS Level - patches, kernel parameters, optimization
  • I/O Analysis - Understand how your database is distributed across hard drives and impacting the performance.
  • Network traffic analysis - Check for Network bottlenecks
  • Backup and Recovery Strategy - Check if the backup strategy is still good with availability goals of the business. Plan for frequent restore tests.
  • Security - Check for recent security patches and updates
  • Logs, traces, Cores - Check for background processes errors before they become major problems.
  • Performance checks - A quick check of log switches to understand peak hours (writes) and top SQL’s to understand most impacting SQL’s, Hit ratios, fragmentations, Waits, contentions, Table scans, etc.
  • Oracle parameters - check if those settings still make sense
  • Advanced Configuration - check RAC, Replication, Standby Database
  • Check Oracle performance indicators using performance stats reports.

SQL Server Health Checks

There are a numbner of Health Checks that can be performed on an SQL Server database . This health check involves a complete investigation of the database and the surrounding environment and can be categorized into the following:

  • Backup and Recovery health check - The SQL Server Health Check will validate your backup and recovery procedures to ensure that your SQL Server database can be recovered in cases of hardware or software failure. 
  • SQL Server best practices health check - We ensure that your database follows best practices for manageability and configuration.
  • SQL Server Performance health check - Our SQL Server Health check will also review all of the SQL Server parameters and disk configuration to ensure that your SQL Server database is optimized to make maximum use of all available hardware resources. This includes a check of the disk I/O sub-system latency (disk bottlenecks) and a review of Network, RAM and CPU utilization.
Inside a SQL Server health check
Within the SQL Server database we must examine many areas of SQL Server performance.  These areas of health checks include:
  • Hardware review - We review your complete external hardware to identify potential bottlenecks and areas of contention.  This step examines disk I/O latency (seeking disk bottlenecks) and a cursory review of Network, RAM and CPU utilization.
  • Windows review - We verify your release and patch levels for Windows. We also review SQL Server integrity checking (if installed).  We also check SQL auditing setting.  
  • Log Review - We also examine all logs (Windows Event Logs, SQL Server long and SQL Agent logs) for alerts and important messages.
  • Transaction logs - We review the transaction log for optimal size and bottlenecks.
  • Workload analysis - We check the SQL Server shared environment in which many databases compete for memory and background process
  • Disk Utilization check - Disk space utilization needs to be examined.
    • Files near maximum size - For files where autogrowth is enabled we check whether any database or log is nearing its maximum file size limit.
    • Disk throughput analysis - We also check I/O stall read and writes times, to see timing details regarding read and write throughput problems for each SQL Server data file.
    • I/O distribution analysis - I/O details for databases and files are obtained, and for SQL Server 2005, we drill down and get I/O at the object level.  From a throughput viewpoint, the iostall column should be zeroed in on as it will reveal which files are experiencing the most delays in terms of accomplishing I/O goals.  The higher the iostall, the worse the files are doing.  These files are likely candidates for physical disk relocation or other such actions.
    • TEMP space - We review tempdb to ensure optimal sizing (disk sorts)
  • Table fragmentation check - Fragmentation is the natural result of table usage, and reorganization of correct fragmentation issues.
  • Server Configuration Options check - BC verifies that all SQL Server configuration parameters are optimized for the system workload.
  • Review Scheduled tasks - Review users and document all auto-start and SQL services options