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The latest News and Information on Databases and related technologies.

Smarter Custom Metrics for Redgate Monitor: Additional Alert Text Query

This is a guest post from Nick Coombe. Redgate Monitor's built-in metrics cover the most common database pressure points out of the box. However, every estate has a few KPIs and metrics that are specific to the business, and users can create custom metrics to track those signals and receive an alert when they cross a threshold.

The benefits of leadership coaching in the tech industry - with Cindy Gross

Steve is joined by Cindy Gross to discuss leadership coaching in the technology industry – what it is, how it works, and the many benefits it brings. Recorded on-site at PASS Data Community Summit 2025 in Seattle. Cindy is an executive coach and Adaptive Leadership Expert with 25 years in the US tech industry. As a former SQL Server Master (MCM) and expert in cross-organizational navigation at Microsoft, she transformed her focus from complex technical systems to empowering leaders within systemic chaos.

Log Management for your Homelab with Fluentd and Aiven for PostgreSQL

Tired of not knowing why your home lab containers are crashing? In this video, we’ll walk through how to set up a consolidated logging pipeline using Aiven for PostgreSQL (with TimescaleDB), Fluentd and Grafana — all running on my upgraded Mac Mini home lab. The key insight: never keep your troubleshooting tools on the same machine that's giving you problems!

VictoriaMetrics February 2026 Ecosystem Updates

This month, we’re thrilled to see OpenAI using the VictoriaMetrics Stack internally — including VictoriaMetrics, VictoriaLogs, and VictoriaTraces — in their Harness engineering experiment, as shown in their architecture diagram. It’s a great way of combining observability and AI agents.

PostgreSQL Explain Plans in AWS Aurora

I recently wrote about a project I created on AWS Aurora PostgreSQL where I'm capturing APRS data from a radio. I focused on the ease of use, getting a database, some Lambda Functions, and a few schedulers working together with a web page. It was easy. However, I'd like to focus on a slightly different area now, performance.

Best SQL Server ODBC Drivers 2026

Most database problems get blamed on queries, schemas, or infrastructure, and rarely on SQL Server ODBC drivers. Fair enough, those components often break. But in many cases, the real culprit is the connection layer itself. Poor drivers can lead to security gaps, performance hits, cloud connection struggles, Unicode issues, or incompatibility across platforms and modern SQL Server versions.

Database Cost Management: How To Control Rising Database Spend

According to CloudZero’s Cloud Economics Pulse, databases are often among the largest and most persistent cloud cost categories. Database costs are notoriously difficult to predict and control. Unlike stateless infrastructure that scales predictably with traffic, databases run continuously and expand behind the scenes, causing costs to rise even when usage appears stable. Because databases run continuously and expand behind the scenes, costs can rise even when usage appears stable.

New high availability architecture for Aiven for PostgreSQL in limited availability

At Aiven, we use and contribute to open source to build our managed data platform. In the early days of Aiven for PostgreSQL, robust cloud-native tools for high availability and streaming backups did not exist at the level we needed. So we built our own. We created pglookout to monitor replication and handle failovers, and we built pghoard for backup and restore using object storage. These tools served us and thousands of our customers well for years. But the open-source PostgreSQL ecosystem has grown.

Database Partitioning: Types, Strategies, and When to Use Each

How database partitioning works in PostgreSQL and MySQL. Range, list, and hash partitioning with SQL examples and guidance on when to partition vs shard. Prathamesh works as an evangelist at Last9, runs SRE stories - where SRE and DevOps folks share their stories, and maintains o11y.wiki - a glossary of all terms related to observability.

Database Sharding: How It Works and When You Actually Need It

How database sharding works, common strategies (hash, range, directory), shard key selection, and the operational cost of running a sharded database in production. Prathamesh works as an evangelist at Last9, runs SRE stories - where SRE and DevOps folks share their stories, and maintains o11y.wiki - a glossary of all terms related to observability.