Databases are a must for almost every company. In particular, a database of up-to-date and accurate data can increase the efficiency of your business, and therefore the rate of profit. However, a slow or error-prone database not only leads to financial loss, but inefficient uptime due to waiting, and customer satisfaction, which falls when you can't get to certain data fast enough. Therefore, you need to do a database health scan on a regular basis. With a healthy database, you can run faster and smoother, improve business processes, and increase customer satisfaction. So how is a database health scan done? How important is it for your business to have up-to-date databases? Let's take a look at all the curious details about the database health scan together.

‍

What is Database Health Screening?

Database health screening is a comprehensive check and analysis of the database. The goal is to identify and predict possible causes of performance loss and potential interruptions. The scan result includes a detailed, clear analysis of the database environment and specific recommendations for improvement. A senior database expert or DBA (database administrator) compiles the report. It is possible to get the result of the database check in the form of a customized report. With regular scans, you can compare previous data and get trend analysis.

A database health scan consists of a series of tasks to check the status of your database. Whether it's a performance, configuration issue, or anything that could cause an outage, a database health scan is a good way for you to identify issues/abnormalities that may occur or may occur in business processes. Database health screening, on the other hand, can be divided into several categories:

• Security control to lock access to the database and ensure that traffic comes from a trusted network with the correct privileges.
• Configuration check to ensure that the configuration meets the standard criteria defined by the organization.
• Performance check to make sure the database is using hardware resources and responding to applications.
• The “Backup” and “Restore” operations, on the other hand, are performed to ensure that the backup received from the database for precautionary purposes can be restored if any problems are encountered.

What Does Database Provide Scanning Consist Of?

The database health screening consists of a series of checks, but there are also stages in this process that need to be paid attention to. These stages can be listed as follows:

• “Database Configuration” assessment based on your proven best practices or check results: This step applies if there has been a prior scan and improvement. Because you need to compare the database health screening analyses with an existing healthy database.
• Identification of slow queries: Here it is determined which areas of the system are reached more slowly and problem areas are identified.
• Data schema analysis: The result of the analysis is shown in the form of a diagram, so that the comparison is made clearer.
• Analysis of operating system and hardware settings: It is very important for you to keep your operating system data safe and get to search results quickly. That is why it is one of the most important stages of health screening.
• Performance tests and audits: They are performed before and after improvements. Speed tests are a priority to achieve maximum efficiency.
• Backup process control: At this stage, the best state of the system is backed up. Provides reassurance against possible problems.
• ‍

How to Perform a Database Health Scan

The database health screening consists of both the control of a number of categories and the specific stages of these controls. Database administrator and experts perform the database health scan. Therefore, with outsourcing, you can maintain control of your databases. Health screening by specialists, on the other hand, usually includes:

• Ensuring database security,
• Comparison of users and privileges in the database with access to the user matrix at hand,
• checking whether the traffic comes from a trusted network, the IP address in the whitelist in the database,
• Enabling the audit log of the database,
• Configuration check,
• Checking the SSL that is already available,
• Ensure that the database configuration is correct (both permission and ownership)
• Performance control,
• Checking the cache hit rate of the database,
• Checking whether the database connection has sufficient capacity to handle traffic,
• Control of the backup and restore procedure,
• Convenient backup program that provides the agreed RPO,
• Testing backups to make sure data is recoverable,

Based on the list above, a script can be created to check these items in each database type (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB). But different guidelines can be followed for each database type.

‍

Importance of Database Health Screening

Your organization is constantly evolving, and your database moves with it. Therefore, changes over time, updates, infrastructure changes or simply the growth of the database can cause delays or errors to leak into the system. With the database health scan, errors can be corrected to ensure the configuration of digital components and ensure their mutual compatibility. So you can manage business processes with up-to-date data. For example, if your data in the customer database is always up to date, you can send campaign emails that are more tailored to your customers' personal preferences, increasing sales and customer satisfaction. You can also use this data to turn potential customers into loyal customers. On the other hand, up-to-date data in your database also allows you to develop new products.

‍

Benefits of Database Health Screening for Your Business

Database health screening is the same as checking a system at certain intervals for proper functioning. You can think of it like check-ups at certain intervals. Because this scan is done more to take precautions than to correct errors. Just as early detection is important for your body and health, detecting faulty or outdated data in the database is important to prevent future errors. Other benefits that you can get with a database health scan can be listed as follows:

• A status check or health check for the database provides an opportunity to improve visible and invisible errors.
• The scan result of the database provides information about the basic settings of the database and its environment.
• Identifies the source of disappointing database performance. Indicates exactly the source of the problem for the solution.
• It provides a good and clear explanation as to whether it can be improved and what is the effect of the proposed improvements. Sometimes the findings can be reduced to sensible advice that can be groundbreaking for some organizations.
• Third-party database health screening organizations can often compare the database of other companies and organizations they own with your database and point out deficiencies.
• In this way, you can get an overview where the differences can be seen, see how healthy your data is or not.
• After scanning, you decide what you want to do with your data. Third-party data experts leave all decisions to you at this stage. If you wish, you can continue without post-check changes.
• However, if you want to keep your database permanently healthy, you can request daily updates. So you can work with a database that is constantly kept up to date after the health check.

Today, databases are the most important element that enables organizations and companies to take the right step. All business, production and management processes are related to the database. Therefore, the more accurate data your database contains and the faster it responds to queries, the healthier the whole operation will proceed. This is very important for the success of the company. If you also want to be sure of the security and timeliness of your data, you can use Komtaş services in all digitalization processes, and you can immediately contact us for solutions tailored to you.