About this Capacity Analyst Tutorial
Go Up to Capacity Analyst Tutorial
This short tutorial helps you get started with IDERA Capacity Analyst. After you complete this exercise. you will have the foundation you need to explore the many features and benefits of Capacity Analyst. You will learn how to set up Capacity Analyst and become familiar with creating and scheduling statistical collections. You will also understand how to analyze database trends and perform future forecasts of your database’s needs.
Summary of the Tasks in this Tutorial
The main categories of Capacity Analyst activities are:
- Creating and editing collections - a collection is basically a specified set of metrics. Capacity Analyst lets you use a wizard to create collections, specifying DBMS-specific metrics as content. You can edit and clone collections as well.
- Executing collections - based on counters, timers, and statistics packages available from the DBMS you are working against, collections store calculated totals. Executing a collection updates the totals in the collection. Depending on your needs, you can execute collections in an ad hoc fashion or you can schedule collections to be executed at regular intervals.
- Analysis and reporting - Capacity Analyst provides prepackaged reports and a visual analysis tool.
This tutorial walks you through a sample of these activities. You will create a collection with a small variety of metrics, schedule the collection to be updated each hour, and use the analysis and reporting tools.
Choosing an Appropriate Database for the Tutorial Exercises
The full power of the analysis and reporting tools can only be realized if you work through the exercises against an active database. For best results, use an active test bed or a production system.
Rationale for a Two-part Tutorial
While a collection stores historical statistics, totals cannot reflect database activities that occurred before the collection was created. In order to view meaningful analysis and reports, enough time must pass to allow a bare minimum of database activity. With that in mind, this tutorial is presented in two parts:
After completing the exercises in session 1, you should wait minimally four hours before starting the second session. This should allow sufficient database activity to allow for meaningful analysis.