Analyzing database traffic and common problems
Some of you may wonder why I have added this section here. After all, databases are considered to be a completely different branch in the IT environment. There are databases and applications on one side and the network and infrastructure on the other side. It is correct since we are not supposed to debug databases; there are DBAs for this. But through the information that runs over the network, we can see some issues that can help the DBAs with solving the problem.
In most cases, the IT staff will come to us first because people blame the network for everything. We will have to make sure that the problems are not coming from the network and that's it. In a minority of the cases, we will see some details on the capture file that can help the DBAs with what they are doing.
Getting ready
When the IT team come to us complaining about the "slow network", there are some things to do just to verify that it is not the case. Follow the instructions...