Database backup and server monitoring

Complex IT infrastructures need centralized systems to monitor services and resources located on Servers and Clients. This is the case, for example, of database backups.

Whatever the tool to perform backups of your database farm, it is essential to check the actual execution, timing and statistics. There are many complex tools for this purpose. For example, Nagios (https://www.nagios.org/) or Monit. Nagios is a complete monitoring system for networks and services. The operating architecture, typically Server2Server or Client2Server, consists of a Core software residing on a machine and multiple agents located on the network nodes).

A specific case could be the monitoring of MySQL backups on Linux / Unix Server. System administrators, once configured “mysqldump” (ie the tool to export databases to text files containing all data and queries to restore the database itself), use command line software such as “Tail” and ” Grep “(https://www.linux.com/blog/14-tail-and-head-commands-linuxunix) to set up an efficient monitoring system.

The problem arises when information must then be centralized, aggregated and analyzed. For this, software such as Nagios are used. For example MySQL commands like “mysqldump-secure” already contain the integration with the Nagios platform.
It must certainly be compared against the problem of complexity. The configuration of Nagios is quite complex and requires a lot of patience, a lot of time, as well as a good deal of knowledge of both scripting and infrastructural languages. It also requires non-beginner level knowledge of open systems and web servers like Apache. Very quickly and simply, we can explain the operation of Nagios focusing on the configuration of the Core software where, in addition to the modification of general configuration files, the most important part is certainly the configuration of the command. The commands are scripts (vbs, PoweShell, Bin-Bash etc.) which will then be executed through the agents on the target machines to be monitored. A classic example of a command could be a linux shell script with Mysql dump and monitoring commands. All this information will then be conveyed in the Software Console and available for aggregations, archiving and analysis. The lack of knowledge and time is the main obstacle for the use of the technology described above.

There are several open source and proprietary alternatives to Nagios, but in this article we would like to focus on its possible integration with a backup and monitoring system in some way “parallel”, which is possible for example with Iperius Backup. This can be analyzed in two ways. Iperius is a software able to perform periodic and automated backups of any database, MySQL or SQL Server for example. Also, it allows you to monitor the good performance of backups in various ways: creating log files, sending them via email, or sending backup results to a centralized console. Since Iperius can create log files in plain text format, it is clear that integrating it with monitoring platforms like Nagios is perfectly possible. Iperius is also a portable software, that can be deployed on complex architectures via policy, and is extremely light, therefore suitable for critical server systems. With a single Iperius installation it is possible to schedule database backups, Hyper-V virtual machines or VMware ESXi, Exchange mail servers – remaining constantly informed of the success of backup procedures.

For small and medium-sized companies, Iperius Backup and its Iperius Console can certainly be considered as a good alternative to more complex solutions to monitor the status of systems and the progress of backup procedures, especially for databases. More information can be found in the following articles:

MySQL backup with Iperius

Iperius Console to monitor backups

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