Monitoring & Observability in NewSQL Databases

2.1 Definitions

• **Monitoring**: The process of collecting, analyzing, and using information to track a system's performance over time.
• **Observability**: The ability to measure and understand the internal state of a system based on the external outputs.

2.2 Importance of Monitoring & Observability

Effective monitoring and observability provide the following benefits:

• Proactive issue detection and resolution.
• Enhanced performance tuning and resource allocation.
• Improved reliability and uptime.

3.1 Metrics Collection

Key metrics to monitor include:

• Query performance (latency, throughput).
• Database connection counts.
• Resource usage (CPU, memory, disk I/O).

3.2 Logging

Implement structured logging to capture detailed information about queries and transactions. Example in SQL:

CREATE TABLE logs (
                    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
                    log_time TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
                    log_level VARCHAR(10),
                    message TEXT
                );

4.1 Tracing

Implement distributed tracing to follow requests across microservices, using tools like OpenTelemetry.

4.2 Health Checks

Regular health checks can be automated to ensure database availability. Example of a health check query:

SELECT 'healthy' AS status WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM pg_database WHERE datname = 'your_database_name');

5.1 Use Alerts Wisely

Set up alerts for critical thresholds but avoid alert fatigue through noise reduction techniques.

5.2 Regular Review

Conduct regular reviews of monitoring data to identify trends and potential issues before they escalate.