Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Redgate Test Data Manager now ships as a Docker image. Pull it, run it, and you're in the product in minutes. For teams working with containers, this is the fastest way to get started.

Part 3, key insights from a fireside chat with Chris Yates. Read part 1 here, and part 2 here. Most database monitoring proof of concepts (POCs) answer the wrong questions. Here's how to structure a proof of concept that genuinely de-risks your vendor decision with the questions to ask during the process. A POC is often treated as the final hurdle in vendor evaluation, but too often, it becomes theatre. A guided tour of the flashiest features, run by one person, under unrealistic conditions.

Most development teams today build everything around Git, and deploy with GitOps principles. Code sits in version controlled environments, changes go through PRs, and deployments are handled through modern CI/CD. That part is pretty standard at this point, especially when using a modern DevOps platform like Harness.

If you've ever run an ALTER TABLE on a busy MySQL table in production, you know the feeling. The change is small. The risk isn't. Long-running table locks, queued writes, application timeouts, replication lag, a five-minute migration that turns into a half-hour incident review. We're shipping an integration that takes that anxiety out of the loop. Harness Database DevOps now supports Percona Toolkit for MySQL as part of Liquibase-based schema management.

N+1 queries are the most common performance problem in Rails applications. ActiveRecord’s lazy loading means every belongs_to, has_many, and has_one association is a potential N+1 waiting to happen. The good news is that Rails gives you multiple ways to fix them, and tools like Scout can find them automatically. This guide covers everything a Rails developer needs to know about N+1 queries: what they are, how to fix them, how to prevent them in CI, and how to detect them in production.

The new Query Plan Compare feature in Redgate Monitor helps PostgreSQL DBAs see when the optimizer switches plans for the same query, and understand why, so they can diagnose sudden performance changes faster.

Observability in software is often framed as a choice between self-hosted and SaaS: manage it yourself, or pay a vendor to handle your data. Both self-hosted and SaaS approaches have their merits, but assuming you must choose one exclusively over the other leads to poor trade-offs: either overcommitting to an all-in-one SaaS despite spiraling costs, or fully self-hosting when it’s unnecessary.

Netdata has always collected database metrics: connections, throughput, replication lag, buffer cache hit ratios, and so on. These tell you that something is wrong, but they don’t tell you why. When your PostgreSQL response time spikes, the metric alone doesn’t tell you which query is responsible. For that, you’ve traditionally needed to SSH into the box, connect to the database, and run diagnostic queries manually. Or set up a separate database monitoring tool entirely.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in Amsterdam brought together about 13,500 attendees this year, the largest turnout yet. The size of the event showed just how much the cloud-native space has grown, and how central observability, platform engineering, and cost control have become. For VictoriaMetrics, this year’s event was a mix of talks, booth conversations, and a lot of direct feedback from users.

Following our 2025 updates, here we recap how VictoriaMetrics Anomaly Detection evolved in Q1 2026. Stay tuned for upcoming content on anomaly detection.

Part 2: Key insights from a fireside chat with Chris Yates. Read part 1 here. Choosing a database monitoring vendor isn't just about features. Once you’re confident that it’s time to reassess your database monitoring strategy, the natural instinct is to start comparing products. However, it’s vital to know how to assess vendor relationships, support quality, and product innovation before you sign anything.

AI Classify reaches general availability this month, TDM gets a Docker image, and we’ve added a few things you’ve been asking for.

Q1 2026 has been one of our most eventful quarters yet for VictoriaMetrics Cloud. We shipped something we have been building towards for a long time, crossed a few infrastructure milestones, and started clearing the path for what is coming next to the most performant observability stack.

A preview of leadership insights shaped by real-world experience Estate-wide clarity for leaders who still need technical depth As data estates grow, the role of technical leaders changes. Visibility becomes harder. Communication becomes more important. Decisions have broader consequences. Many leaders start their careers focused on the technical details.

You’ve masked your database. You’re confident you’ve covered all your PII. But not all of it lives where you’d expect it to. AI Classification, Redgate's data scanning capability, automatically catches sensitive data before it reaches your developers, your test environments, or your auditors.

We are excited to announce a significant update to our ODBC Drivers product line. This release delivers broader compatibility across modern data platforms, improved integration with third-party tools, and extended support for advanced data types and authentication methods.

This is a guest post from Laura Copeland. Key insights from a fireside chat with Chris Yates. Part 1. Choosing the right database monitoring vendor isn’t just a technical decision, it’s a strategic one that affects your teams, your estate, your growth plans, and the culture of your organisation. It’s also a personal one if you’re a DBA. Something as critical as your monitoring system will shape your day‑to‑day work, and, in many cases, how well you sleep at night.

Last month, the VictoriaMetrics team gave a talk on retroactive sampling at KubeCon Europe 2026. By writing this blog post, as a transcript of the session, we want to explain how retroactive sampling reduces outbound traffic, CPU, and memory usage in the data collection pipeline significantly compared to tail sampling in OpenTelemetry.

Application delivery has accelerated over the last decade. Modern CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and cloud infrastructure have already raised the baseline. Now AI-assisted coding tools are compressing timelines further still - developers are writing and shipping code faster than ever.

This is a guest post from Adam Atreides. SQL Prompt's March releases focused on Prompt AI improvements and SSMS 22.4 compatibility.

Short Summary: This guide shows how to find and fix slow search queries when performance drops for no clear reason. It covers how to use dbForge tools to check execution plans, look at index fragmentation, and understand “warm-up” behavior so things stay consistent as your data grows.

Even when APIs, cloud connectors, and native integrations dominate the conversation in 2026, Oracle ODBC drivers remain the bedrock of enterprise data flow. They quietly power the BI dashboards you rely on, the Excel reports you trust, and the legacy systems you still depend on. But not all Oracle ODBC drivers deliver the same results. Some are built for speed, stability, and modern analytics workloads, while others struggle to keep up with today’s enterprise demands.

Choosing your Salesforce ADO.NET provider is more than ticking boxes; it’s the foundation of how your.NET apps interact with Salesforce data. That’s why this decision requires careful consideration of critical features, like ORM support, Entity Framework compatibility, query flexibility, and security. However, this process is far from simple; many providers don’t provide enough concrete details upfront.

When you build a.NET app that runs on Oracle, think of your Oracle ADO.NET provider as the engine under the hood. It powers how efficiently your connections run, determining speed, stability, and how smoothly your app deploys. Pick the right provider, and your app hums: fast and reliable. Choose the wrong one? That’s when you hit sluggish performance, driver incompatibilities, deployment headaches, or lack of advanced ORM support. To avoid that, we’ve broken down what works.

We are excited to announce the latest release of SecureBridge, EntityDAC, and the full family of dbExpress drivers. This update delivers expanded IDE compatibility, support for the latest database versions, new security components, and platform improvements that benefit developers across the Delphi and Lazarus ecosystem.

Welcome to the March release roundup of VictoriaMetrics Stack, covering key enhancements in VictoriaMetrics and VictoriaLogs. These updates deliver improved UI scalability, enhanced authentication flexibility, improved query performance, and logging tools that streamline observability workflows in production environments. This roundup covers releases for.

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications, abstracting many of the manual steps of rolling upgrades and scaling. When building cloud-native applications in a Kubernetes environment, you’ll often need to deploy database applications like a PostgreSQL database so that your applications can leverage their features within the cluster.

ClickHouse is widely used for large-scale analytics, but once it is running in production, it can be difficult to understand how query activity translates into resource usage. Engineers investigating performance issues often struggle to determine which queries consume the most memory, run most frequently, or cause spikes in load. In practice, engineers are left querying system.query_log, tailing server logs, and piecing together information after an incident.

When you’re building.NET applications, the choice between free ORM tools and commercial ones can make or break your project’s future. It’s not about one side winning, both have standout strengths. Free tools like Entity Framework Core or Dapper offer flexibility without the price tag. However, as projects grow, teams need commercial tools to deal with larger schemas, more complex mappings, and multiple developers working on the same data layer.

Short Summary: Many companies evaluate cloud platforms when they reach scalability limits on existing infrastructure, with migration decisions typically driven by a broader mix of factors: cost optimization, availability, security, and access to managed services. However, despite this shift, a lot of teams still run SQL Server on their own servers. Keeping these systems running well requires good monitoring, performance tuning, and regular maintenance.