Database administrators must monitor their databases for factors such as availability, health, and performance. However, monitoring also has costs associated with it that may exceed the benefits it provides. A performance monitoring tool is essential for mission-critical databases, but this may not be the case for non-critical databases — those used for archival, development, and testing purposes.
The best solution for this situation is often a dual-monitoring environment that uses both a performance monitoring tool and an inventory management tool. An inventory management tool performs less monitoring than a performance monitoring tool with a corresponding reduction in cost. And it is often better to perform limited health monitoring than no monitoring at all.
Read the whitepaper “How users of a performance monitoring tool can benefit from an inventory management tool” to learn more about the benefits of light monitoring, including cost, time, and overhead.