I’m attempting this is be as unbiased as possible, since I write the Monolith application. This will hopefully help one decide between a free MySQL server monitoring system and paying for a per-server based licensed product. Both have strengths and weaknesses that should be pointed out before making a decision. You can infer the weaknesses based on the strengths below. That said, let’s just get into it.
Strengths of each product over the other
Monolith – MySQL DBA Console
- presents overall database size, index size, data size, number of schema per server, and aggregate statistics for all monitored servers
- runs mysql server backups remotely and reports on backup state execution
- collects cnf files from each server during the talkback script execution for historical viewing
- built on the LAMP stack, no need for tomcat/jboss knowlege
- provides overall server report, and change control documentation with recommended actions for tuning the server(s)
- application can run under Redhat Cluster Services for high availability
- comes with XML export API for off-application data processing and trending
- compatible with Visual Mining
- is FREE software, GPL licensed, costs absolutely nothing to the user
MySQL Enterprise Dashboard
- customizable alerting instead of fixed alerts
- fine tuned date range graphing (from date to date instead of last X days)
- support for bug tracking that utilizes hooks into bugs.mysql.com
- uses local server agent for information gathering, allows CPU and OS memory to be reported on
- presentation design is arguably more easy on the eyes
- comes with the MySQL Enterprise Server software, and thus a support contract from MySQL/Sun.
- customizable organization of server list instead of organization by client name
Feel free to post your viewpoints on each if you have used both products. I’m always interested in what users have to say.
You can get Monolith here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/monolith-mysql
You can get MySQL Enterprise here: http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/
