Another Graveyard Shift

Well, after limited success on my last graveyard shift, I've now been commissioned for another overnight shift...

So - what does a DBA do whilst babysitting a batch run? Simple... set up more reporting and statistics from other databases of course! As bad as that sounds, it's really not. It means a new database for one, and for another, it means I can keep my development skills sharp, in this case in Perl, Shell scripting and PG/PLSQL, as well as some statistical analysis skills I learnt a while back to do some pretty nifty 6 sigma reporting!

So, what why and how?
What:
Ok, so I intend to record all batch run stats for all the live/DR PostgreSQL databases I administer, as well as setting up nagios notifications.

Why:
At my company there has previously been no "serious" reporting, monitoring and notifications on database status and performance, this is something I intend to remedy

How:
Using a combination of Nagios, Bucardo's excellent Check_Postgres Perl script, shell scripting and PLPGSQL, I plan to use a series of functions on a database that will be called remotely before, during and after batch scripts to log run times, errors and faults. These snippets of data will also be pushed through Nagios with text messaging installed.


It sounds a bit naff to be fair, however; I'll post updates on where I'm at with it as and when I make progress!