EDW & Appliance Workload Management

Active Workload Manager (AWM)heartbeat-64px

Automated Workload & System Management:

At all times, the rules that have been created can be active, and dependent on what the real-time monitoring sees, AWM can and will intervene automatically.

This ensures optimum data warehouse performance is maintained continuously, and when problems do occur they can be analysed in detail and remedied to ensure they do not re-occur.

Used in combination with Visual Edge, AWM can manage/diagnose the overall Operational (and Test & Development) performance life-cycle.

Productivity:

Through use of the tab-based Rules Builder form, automated logging, Safe Mode, and capture of end-user SQL and Explain steps, AWM users can dramatically reduce the time spent managing the day to day challenges that typically absorb hours and days of operational and development resource.

ROI:

Just a single incident avoided is likely to justify the cost of implementing AWM. The bottom line impact of delay and failure of key work, jobs, queries and development is conservatively estimated for major enterprises at between $4,000-$20,000 USD per Minute, and it takes the avoidance of just a single major problem to recover the price of AWM.

Speed & Safety of Implementation:

AWM can be installed very rapidly, and can be working for the enterprise in just hours, and to ensure that implementation is correct with the rules set sensibly, a “safe” mode has been included to ensure that you don’t have to go live until you are quite content with the settings.

Redundancy:

Given that AWM can have a significant beneficial impact on the behaviour and performance of the warehouse, AWM comes with the capability to be installed in multiple instances to ensure that should the first server that AWM is running on become unavailable, a second copy on another Server can pick up the work, transparently to the users and the warehouse.

Licensing:

AWM is deployed via a Windows server, and can be licensed in one of the following ways;

  • Server License – (Perpetual or multi-year rental)
  • Site License – (Perpetual or multi-year rental)
  • Enterprise License – (Perpetual or multi-year rental)

Autonomous Interventional Monitoring for EDW and Appliances

Originally designed to provide functionality requested by a client, AWM continues to be an extremely easy-to-use application that delivers powerful Query, User and Workload control. Taking only minutes to install and implement, and with a library of pre-configured rules (all customisable), Teradata customers can implement flexible Workload control in less than an hour.

Deployable against both Teradata 6xxx and Appliance data warehouses for real time workload monitoring and management, AWM uses a simple work-flow based around a sequential 5-step tabbed workflow. DBA’s, System Managers, Operations Managers and other suitably permissioned users can take advantage of the power of AWM, extending if required into Development and Test platforms, for comprehensive workload control.

Rules can be created (based on individual usernames, Priority Scheduler Performance Groups, WLD  or Roles), that ensure whenever the relevant criteria are met, the chosen action(s), notifications and logging  are executed, from “Do Nothing” through “Email” or “Alert” to Session or Query termination or even Account Suspension.

Notification via chosen  mechanisms (such as Openview, BMC Patrol, Unicenter etc) to the  relevant  Supervisory staff or other interested parties is fully automated, as is full logging of any rule conditions being triggered and resultant actions and notifications. As would be expected of an EDW-class application, checks and balances are incorporated to ensure that AWM optimises the application of the triggered actions.

A “Safe Mode” is incorporated to allow rules to be set but crucially not activated  – simply logged allowing the user to assess the veracity and appropriate nature of the rules set and thus the depth to which AWM is utilised. Critically, when rules are triggered, the SQL that the user responsible for triggering the rule was running and the Explain Step reached at the time the rule was triggered are automatically captured and written to the AWM log for further root-cause analysis. The captured SQL can be pasted straight into Ward’s Prism query analysis and optimisation tool for detailed root-cause analysis.

Key Features

Intuitive Interface

Ward’s tab-based interface has been designed to deliver the workflow experience in a painless and intuitive manner. Even inexperienced users can exploit the power of AWM.

EDW or Appliance

AWM has been designed to be implemented against Enterprise class EDW’s or Appliances, and has functionality for Appliances that is not available in Teradata’s TASM.

Easy to use

The tab-based workflow is simplicity itself to use, and allows multiple complex rules to be created and implemented in a very short space of time.

Production, Development & Test

As an aggressively priced application, AWM is applicable across all Teradata platforms. Ward clients use AWM to both manage their production environments and also catch performance problems in Dev & Test so that the issues never get near Production.