Media Coverages
http://www.products.datamation.com/dms/rdbms/1170105717.html
Jan. 30, 2007
Data Management/Storage
Clarity
Change Management, Provisioning, Auditing, More for Heterogeneous DBs
GridApp's flagship product is Clarity (also called GridApp Clarity by the vendor), which is targeted primarily to DBAs and provides a centralized and automated platform from which multiple database management tasks can be performed across heterogeneous databases; including MS SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and DB2. The unified command console is accessible via a Web-based GUI, command line, or an API; and provides the automated ability to provision new DBs, inventory and manage the configurations of existing DBs, audit DB actions (including configuration changes), and maintain DBs, including software upgrade and patch management tools. According to the vendor, the single interface provides access to all available modules as well as each of the managed DBs.
The vendor bills their key offering as a "closed-loop" system that can manage the entire DB lifecycle. Its architecture consists of the central Clarity Engine, which communicates and interacts with individual agent components that are themselves deployed on the DB server. In addition to these primary components, the platform includes a CMDB that is fed from the information collected by the agents, and an ETL and reporting engine that facilitate the examination of the gathered information. The software functions as a management layer to the DB platforms, not residing directly in the data path.
Key functions and capabilities of the platform include:
– Inventory and configuration management, including DB inventory discovery, creation of the CMDB, and reporting (license, server inventory, storage utilization). Baseline configurations can be defined, with those deployments that deviate from the baseline automatically highlighted.
– Auditing controls and standardization templates, including the ability to monitor/track all changes to the DB infrastructure with support for both alerting and reporting.
– Automated management, including automated software upgrades; patching by policy or manual target machine selection; automated provisioning of new DBs (including the creation and deployment of standard DB images); automatic revalidation of DB configurations on a periodic basis; and dynamic allocation of a DB's resources to compensate for usage spikes.
Beyond the base Clarity offering, the vendor also offers their D2500 appliance; a preloaded DB infrastructure platform that marries Clarity with an optimized build of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a blade server architecture. The vendor states that the D2500 supports the most common DB applications, including Oracle and DB2.
New in the latest release of the D2500 appliance is support for SNMP-based management; and enhanced Oracle support, including support for Oracle Cluster File System 2, support for 64-bit Oracle on Linux, and support for newer versions of Oracle 10gR2.
Clarity is available now. Visit the GridApp Systems Web site for further information.