Ignite for Service Providers

Confio Ignite offers service providers (SPs) the ability to improve performance and service delivery of applications to their customers. There is not a separate service provider product. Rather, Confio offers special pricing, configurations and performance reporting that are designed specifically for service providers operating and monitoring Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and Sybase databases used by their customers. The SP program is specifically designed to address the rapidly changing configuration of physical and virtual servers in a typical SP data center.

Benefits

Ignite gives SPs a solution to improve service levels on databases they operate, and to demonstrate service improvement for the applications that depend on the databases. SPs use the tool to easily communicate database status and SLA compliance to customers with understandable charts. Ignite is focused on the most important metric - sources of application waiting - so it directly addresses the service levels that customers most care about, not just server health.

Download the Ignite for Service Providers Datasheet

Flexible FIRE Pricing

The Flexible Ignite Registration Environment (FIRE) program gives SPs a way to move Ignite monitoring licenses among servers in a rapidly changing and virtual server environment. With "pay by the month" pricing, SPs pay only for the licenses currently in use on their servers, and have the flexibility to instantly self generate license keys when needed.

Ignite can be used to monitor databases remotely or in a local data center. The new Ignite PI architecture efficiently monitors hundreds of databases, captures the data, and makes performance management accessible over the web with no installed client.

The Ignite PI server is the heart of Ignite, and is located as closed as possible to the monitored databases. PI must be on the same local area network (LAN) or high speed wide area network (WAN) as the monitored databases. Ignite PI installs on any Java enabled server running Windows, Linux or UNIX, and does not require a dedicated server. The Performance Data Warehouse repository database can be on the same or a separate server as PI, as long as they are on the same LAN.

There is no restriction on the number of PI servers installed. Confio recommends a PI server for each data center allowing them to be remotely monitored by distant users.

The Ignite agentless architecture does not install any software on the monitored database server. Monitoring is configured from the PI server to capture performance data from licensed monitored database servers. Monitors can be started on rapidly changing server configurations without any software changes. All that is required is a current license key for each monitored server installed on the PI server.

DBA, developer and management users can be located remotely and access all authorized Ignite features locally or over the internet through a web browser. There is no traffic or latency impact of remote browser client usage. Roles and access privileges for different users can be defined per database to ensure that correct access is given to each system.

SLA Management

Ignite enables Service Providers to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and demonstrate SLA compliance to their customers. The most important performance metric for delivering service is the response time for application users. Ignite monitoring is based on wait time imposed inside the database, and Ignite reporting is specifically designed to identify and resolve the problems causing users to wait.

Using Ignite, a SP can:

• Document response time for a chosen SQL query on an hourly, daily or weekly basis
• Prove when application changes caused a change of database response time
• Report trends of time each application or server spends waiting on the database, showing improvement or compliance with required response
• Get early warning of blocking or bottlenecks that left unchecked, would cause SLA violations

Automatic Report Distribution

Ignite's report subscription capability allows SPs to define a report and have it automatically distributed via email at scheduled times. For example, the database team could have a chart of hourly application waiting distributed to every application manager's email box each morning.

Alerting

Ignite Alerts can be applied to SLA management as well. Ignite can watch execution time for critical SQLs, and notify DBAs if they exceed target levels. By gaining early warning, DBAs can take responsive action before application customers see the delay, preventing an SLA violation.

Flexible Ignite Registration Environment - FIRE

FIRE is a license management program for service providers that enables them to move Ignite monitoring licenses based on their rapidly changing server configurations. Designed to be used for monitoring databases on both dedicated and virtual server environments, FIRE allows Ignite users to self-generate short term license keys when they need them. Customers purchase volumes of keys in advance, and when an authorized DBA needs a key to solve a performance issue on virtual server, the DBA can instantly get a license to monitor the desired system.

FIRE Benefits

Changing Configurations
Monitor database servers or instances that frequently change, without need to buy and assign a permanent license for use of Ignite.

Quick Access
Give technical teams instant access to new license keys when required to monitor new servers, without requiring purchasing or ordering process.

Match Revenues and Costs
Subscription based plan matches license costs to period of use, allowing SPs to match expenses with customer revenue stream or to pass costs on to customers.

FIRE Program Procedures

FIRE licensing is based on one-month increments for the desired database servers to be monitored. SPs choose the server and instance names they wish to monitor, and generate license keys in monthly increments from the Ignite FIRE website. Each license key includes license, support and maintenance the duration of the key.

SPs pre-pay for a volume of FIRE licenses and draw down the balance when individual keys are issued. Keys are measured in CPU core months (Oracle, DB2, Sybase) and Instance months (SQL Server).

For example, issuing a FIRE license key for a 4 core server hosting an Oracle database, when monitoring is required for 1 month, would deduct 4 core x 1 month = 4 core months. Issuing a FIRE key for a SQL Server instance with monitoring required for 3 months would deduct 1 instance x 3 months = 3 instance months.

A minimum initial purchase starts the program off. Then licenses can be issued in any quantity or duration up to the remaining purchased balance. For specific details on pricing, contact Confio Sales.