Comprehensive Database Monitoring Platform
I built a centralized monitoring and alerting platform for a multi-database environment, providing visibility into performance, availability, and capacity across 50+ database instances.
At a glance
- •MTTD: hours → minutes
- •Prevented 12+ outages in 6 months
- •On-call burden: -60%
Problem Statement
An organization with 50+ database instances across PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server had no centralized monitoring. The DBA team was stuck doing reactive troubleshooting and manual health checks. Users discovered issues before the monitoring system did. Capacity planning was guesswork, leading to emergency storage expansions.
Architecture & Design
I implemented a monitoring stack using Prometheus for metrics collection, Grafana for visualization, and Alertmanager for intelligent alerting. Deployed exporters on each database host to collect metrics like query performance, replication lag, connections, cache hit ratios, and disk I/O. Built custom Python exporters for app-specific metrics and synthetic monitoring.
Implementation Details
I deployed node_exporter, postgres_exporter, and mysqld_exporter across all database hosts. Configured Prometheus with retention and federation for large-scale data collection. Built 15+ Grafana dashboards covering database health, performance trends, capacity forecasting, and query analytics. Set up tiered alerting with escalation policies based on severity and time of day. Created runbooks linked from alerts for faster incident response.
Results & Outcome
Mean time to detect issues dropped from hours to minutes. Prevented 12+ production outages in the first 6 months through proactive alerting. Database team saved 15 hours per week in manual monitoring. Capacity planning improved with 6-month trend forecasting. On-call burden decreased 60% through fewer false positives and better alert context.