New Quest Spotlight Cloud Ensures Consistent Performance and High Availability for Database Cloud Workloads

October 31, 2018 Off By David

Quest Software, a global systems management, data protection and security software provider, today announced general availability of the new Spotlight Cloud. Delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Spotlight Cloud provides 24/7 performance monitoring, instant diagnostics, and powerful tuning to ensure consistent performance and high availability across Microsoft SQL Server database environments. The first release of Spotlight Cloud includes the availability of Spotlight Cloud Professional for SQL Server which lowers SQL Server cost of ownership and simplifies deployment and maintenance. The new Spotlight Tuning Pack Professional, a component also available in the first release of Spotlight Cloud, makes high-end performance tuning easy for organizations of any size. 

Organizations today rely on their database infrastructure to uphold service levels and provide decision makers with the data they need to make informed decisions that support business growth. Maintaining a healthy database infrastructure, however, requires the ability to diagnose performance issues quickly and accurately. With Spotlight Cloud, DBAs and developers can resolve issues proactively before they impact the business.

Leveraging cloud compute, Spotlight Cloud is able to hold performance data longer and deliver deeper analytics with the highest level of security. Today, many environments are hybrid-combining on premise and cloud workloads. In the cloud, performance is no longer just about availability and response time. Now, cost is a major factor. Spotlight Cloud highlights areas where users can optimize for optimal performance. It also gives users the ability to gain deep insights into the nature of a workload over long periods to make the best provisioning choices in terms of how, where and how much to deploy.

"Every second counts when servers fail or slow down. Most monitoring systems only tell you when something has failed and when it is about to fail, whereas Spotlight Cloud can alert you of potential bottlenecks before they impact the business," said Patrick O’Keefe, VP of Engineering of Quest Software. "With Spotlight Cloud, there’s no need to worry about the distraction and expense of setting up and maintaining on premise performance repositories. Developers and administrators can focus on solving problems and tuning their databases for increased reliability and faster performance."

With Spotlight Cloud, DBAs and developers have anytime, anywhere access to quickly identify performance degradation and isolate the cause of a performance issue. Unlike most solutions that only send alerts and have limited information viewable via a browser on mobile devices, Spotlight Cloud offers native mobile apps for iOS and Android. Innovative approaches such as "Smart Alarms" allow the user to get more contextual information faster so that they can begin to issue triage in seconds and to solve problems straight from their devices.

"Before having a monitoring tool in place, all we could do was react as database situations occurred," said Daniel S. Boucher, Director of IT, Core-Logix. "Now with Spotlight Cloud, we can be proactive because we have our very own ‘Eye of Providence’. It keeps watch when I cannot."

"Mobility is no longer a trend, it’s a reality for today’s DBAs," said Peter O’Connell, Senior Product Manager at Quest Software. "In the middle of a crisis, every second counts. Critical production servers that drive production or process transactions can cause losses of thousands of dollars per second. With this type of pressure, DBAs need every bit of help they can get. It’s important that they treat the symptom fast, and equally important that they have enough data and insight at their fingertips to ensure they can tackle the root cause to prevent re-occurrence."

Spotlight Cloud key features and functionalities:

  • Smart Alarms: Enables the start of problem resolution as soon as an issue is detected by presenting data trends, contextual data and advisories in the alarm itself. This allows DBAs to shortcut the initial problem triage and begin solving issues immediately, so they get to the root cause faster.
  • Workload Analysis: Provides a way to dissect workload across a range of dimensions and from different perspectives, to allow DBAs to pinpoint what is having the greatest impact on specific aspects of their workload.
  • Health Checks: Runs a range of proactive checks on databases to look for worrying trends or deviations from best practice. This feature can identify problems in the making and will suggest or take corrective action.
  • Spotlight Tuning Pack: Helps navigate complex query plans with an advisor that interprets their structure and an artificial intelligence engine which identifies code optimizations to improve the performance of your query.
  • Native Mobile Application: Allows DBAs to monitor and manage from their iOS and Android mobile or tablet device.
  • Data History: Keeps data for up to a year, versus most on premise solutions that keep data for a week to a month.

Spotlight Cloud is generally available.