Network management, particularly the effective handling of system logs, is crucial in maintaining a high-performance and secure IT infrastructure. Log files, or simply logs, are generated by network devices such as switches and routers, serving as valuable resources to understand the intricacies of network performance, spot anomalies, and even comply with regulatory requirements. One popular…

Businesses, organizations, and individuals rely on networks to communicate and exchange data. The rapid growth of technology and increasing reliance on networked systems have made robust network performance and security critical. However, maintaining optimal network performance and security is a difficult task. Network failures, security breaches, and performance bottlenecks can result in substantial financial losses…

LAST EDIT: 9/22/2022 4:57 PM In our technological world, arguably one of the most frustrating situations is when you open your laptop or turn on your computer to work on something important, and the network’s slow. You try to open your email, but it won’t connect. Webpages won’t load. The company messaging system is unresponsive….

WhatsUp Gold is a popular tool for executing network monitoring processes. Before considering viable WhatsUp Gold alternatives, I’ll quickly go over why WhatsUp Gold monitoring is so effective, so you know what to look for in its replacement. Skip to Best WhatsUp Gold Alternative Tools >>> What Is WhatsUp Gold Software? WhatsUp Gold is software…

As a small business IT team, you’re faced with myriad challenges and expectations. You have to deliver and support what your business is trying to accomplish with technology. You wear multiple hats within IT—perhaps one minute you’re installing software on a laptop, and the next minute, you’re troubleshooting a network issue. You protect one of…

In IT, we’re always seeking new ways to optimize networks while spending as little money and time as possible. However, this challenge is compounded by the influx of continually emerging technologies. From cloud services and wireless applications to remote workers using VPN and IoT tools, these technologies doing their part to make network infrastructure better—and…

Once upon a time, “server monitoring” was a delightfully straightforward category of the monitoring sub-discipline within IT. There was a box, the box had an operating system, and that operating system did certain things for the organization. Even when the word server became conflated to mean both “the box in the data center” and “the…

Uptime is of critical importance for your company’s networks and systems, alongside its website and web service delivery. It has a direct impact on your company’s ability to support end users and deliver services. Not maintaining high levels of uptime can significantly interfere with a business’s ability to work productively or impact user satisfaction by…

Keeping track of a network’s devices, data, and other details is crucial to maintaining your network’s productivity and organization. However, there’s a lot to do when it comes to network management—trying to record important information, organize physical and logical equipment, and troubleshoot performance issues can be overwhelming. My advice is to invest in remote network…

Network performance monitoring tools can allow network professionals to have a real-time overview of an entire network so they can better troubleshoot problems and reduce downtime. Adopting world-class network performance monitoring software with dashboards, alerts, and other key features can help you save money and time while boosting productivity. Below, we’ve listed what we feel…

Maintaining data security is a top priority for any organization. Secure Sockets Layer certificates—usually called SSL certificates—are an important part of this effort. SSL certificates are small data files designed to prevent hackers from getting access to private business data as it passes between a website and a visitor’s browser. They do this by creating…

The log management tools I feature here are either free or have a free tier of service. While it’s fantastic to find a bargain, that doesn’t always make it the best choice for a given use case. IT budgets aren’t infinite, I get that. But don’t let budget considerations alone keep you trapped in log…

As the number of wireless networks explodes, detecting, managing, and maintaining your Wi-Fi can become problematic. When everyone around you is blasting their own Wi-Fi signals—particularly in large business complexes with lots of other large companies—you’re more likely to experience problems with Wi-Fi signals dropping out, poor connectivity, and slow performance. Within your Wi-Fi network,…

You can use the CREATE TABLE statement to enforce several different kinds of constraints on a table: candidate keys, primary keys, foreign keys, and check conditions. A CONSTRAINT clause can constrain a single column or group of columns in a table. The point of these constraints is to get Oracle to do most of the work…

The log buffer space wait event occurs when server processes write data into the log buffer faster than the LGWR process can write it out. The LGWR process begins writing entries to the online redo log file if any of the following conditions are true: The log buffer reaches the _log_io_size threshold. By default, this…

A user process acquires the CACHE BUFFERS CHAINS latch to scan the System Global Area (SGA) for database cache buffers. Blocks in the buffer cache are placed on linked lists (cache buffer chains). Blocks are put on the hash chain according to their DBA (data block address) and CLASS of the block. Each hash chain…

Recently, I was assisting one of our customers for Oracle trying to diagnose sessions waiting on the “enq: TM – contention” event. The blocked sessions were executing simple INSERT statements similar to: INSERT INTO supplier VALUES (:1, :2, :3); Waits on enq: TM – contention indicate there are unindexed foreign key constraints. Reviewing the SUPPLIER…

The db file sequential read wait event has three parameters: file#, first block#, and block count. In Oracle Database 10g, this wait event falls under the User I/O wait class. Keep the following key thoughts in mind when dealing with the db file sequential read wait event. Common Causes, Diagnosis, and Actions The db file…

The fn_dblog() function (formerly known as the DBCC command) is one of several undocumented functions for SQL Server; it allows you to view the transaction log records in the active part of the transaction log file for the current database. Note that use of the fn_dblog() function (and all other undocumented commands) against a production…

About the direct path read temp wait event When a session reads buffers from disk directly into the PGA, the wait is on direct path read temp. This is closely related to the direct path read wait. If the I/O subsystem doesn’t support asynchronous I/Os, then each wait corresponds to a physical read request. If…

The PL/SQL lock timer wait event represents the amount of time a user or application has “slept” through the USER_LOCK.SLEEP or DBMS_LOCK.SLEEP procedures. The ‘idle’ event “PL/SQL lock timer” is worth watching because it can indicate issues with application response, throughput and possibly coding. The PL/SQL lock timer wait event is, as the command that issues…