Monitoring the Intersystems Cache Database

eG Enterprise offers a specialized monitoring model for the Cache database (see Figure 17) that monitors the database 24 x 7 and proactively alerts administrators of probable issues in its operations, so that issues are trapped very early and resolved before its too late. 

    

Figure 17 : Layer model of the Cache database server

Each of the layers depicted by the hierarchical model above, is associated with a wide variety of tests that measure the health of various factors influencing database performance. The performance metrics reported by these tests shed light on the following:

Cache Service/Process Monitoring	Is the cache instance up and running? How responsive is the cache database server to client requests? Are the critical processes running? What is their resource usage?
Cache System/ Database Monitoring	What is the current status of the database - read-only or read-write? Is there sufficient free space in the Cache databases? Are there any severe/fatal errors logged in the console log? Is license usage optimal? Is data adequately referenced so as to enable easy retrieval? Is global referencing normal or are there way too many or too little global accesses? Have too many locks been created on any database instance? If so, what are the lock types? Are there any potentially dangerous lock types? Are too many processes contending for a lock on the database? Are resource seizes occurring? If so, what types of seizes are they? Were any critical changes made to the database, recently? Was the write daemon able to write all changes to the database? What is the current status of the write daemon?
Ecp Application/Data Server Monitoring	Is data transmitted properly from the application and data servers? Are the global references affecting database performance? Do the requests from data servers affect traffic?
Cache Performance/Buffer Monitoring	What is the workload of the data server in terms of lines & routine executed? Has sufficient memory been allocated to the buffers to reduce physical disk IO? Have the routine and database caches been adequately sized?