Resources

Guides, tutorials, and insights to help you master observability.

Logs Without the Regret, Part 2: Building the Alloy and Loki Pipeline
Blog

Logs Without the Regret, Part 2: Building the Alloy and Loki Pipeline

Part 1 made the case that log cost is set at write time by what you index. This is the hands-on half. A production-grade Alloy and Loki pipeline comes down to four decisions: what gets in, what gets rewritten, what gets indexed, and what happens when the backend is unavailable. Here's the three-component minimum that proves the transport works, the OTTL processors that filter and redact in flight, how to set label policy server-side in otlp_config, and the four signals worth alerting on once it is live.

Aug 19, 2026

Least-Privilege by Design: One Read-Only, TLS-First Way to Monitor DB2, SQL Server, and MySQL
Blog

Least-Privilege by Design: One Read-Only, TLS-First Way to Monitor DB2, SQL Server, and MySQL

Every database monitoring tool eventually meets the security team, and the answer is usually a broad-privilege account plus an agent installed on the database host. That's a design choice, not a law of nature. Here's the posture shared by all three Integration Plumbers plug-ins for Oracle Enterprise Manager: one read-only grant per engine, an encrypted connection that won't quietly downgrade, your choice of where collection runs, and why that same design reaches a managed cloud database without a rebuild.

Aug 13, 2026

Logs Without the Regret, Part 1: How Loki and Alloy Fit Into OpenTelemetry
Blog

Logs Without the Regret, Part 1: How Loki and Alloy Fit Into OpenTelemetry

Most log pipelines weren't chosen so much as inherited, and the bill nobody can fully explain traces back to a single decision: what you put in the index. Loki's native OTLP endpoint splits log data into a small set of indexed labels and unlimited structured metadata, and Grafana Alloy gives you a server-side place to decide which is which. Here's why traditional pipelines break on cardinality, what the native endpoint actually changes, and where the collector tier still earns its keep.

Aug 3, 2026

No Cliff, No Drama: Monitoring DB2 11.5 and 12.1, and the New Ground Ahead
Blog

No Cliff, No Drama: Monitoring DB2 11.5 and 12.1, and the New Ground Ahead

While MySQL and SQL Server admins spent this summer watching end-of-support dates, DB2 is a continuity story: 11.5 is supported into the next decade and 12.1's end-of-support date hasn't been published yet. Here's why that makes now the right time to fix DB2 monitoring rather than migrate it, what the DB2 Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager closes that even IBM's free Data Management Console leaves open, and the ground on the roadmap in Db2 for z/OS and the 12.1 AI Query Optimizer.

Jul 29, 2026

Inside the OpenTelemetry GenAI SIG: The Conversations Shaping AI Observability
Blog

Inside the OpenTelemetry GenAI SIG: The Conversations Shaping AI Observability

The GenAI semantic conventions aren't handed down by a vendor. They're argued out in weekly public meetings and a Slack channel anyone can join, and the biggest open questions — evaluation, agentic systems, content privacy, and cost attribution — are the ones that decide whether your production telemetry is portable in three years. Here's where the debates are happening and how to walk in.

Jul 20, 2026

After MEM: The Next Chapter for MySQL Monitoring in Oracle Enterprise Manager
Blog

After MEM: The Next Chapter for MySQL Monitoring in Oracle Enterprise Manager

MySQL Enterprise Monitor reached end of life in January 2025, and Oracle guided customers to its Enterprise Manager plug-in as the path forward. Oracle has since published a deprecation notice for that plug-in through My Oracle Support. The MySQL Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager from Integration Plumbers provides continuity: the same console, the MEM features the Oracle plug-in didn't include, and a collection layer built for MySQL 8.4.

Jul 16, 2026

GenAI Observability in OpenTelemetry: Where the Standard Actually Stands in 2026
Blog

GenAI Observability in OpenTelemetry: Where the Standard Actually Stands in 2026

OpenTelemetry's GenAI semantic conventions have become the de facto vocabulary for AI observability, and every major vendor now speaks it, while the spec itself is still in Development. Here's how the conventions reached their six-layer shape, the attributes and metrics worth emitting today, and the state of vendor, framework, and tooling adoption in 2026.

Jul 10, 2026

SQL Server 2016 End of Support: What Your Monitoring Should Do About the July 14 Cliff
Blog

SQL Server 2016 End of Support: What Your Monitoring Should Do About the July 14 Cliff

On July 14, 2026, SQL Server 2016 leaves extended support, the same month Microsoft's surviving SQL tooling has gone paid, Azure-first, and Windows-only, with AWS force-upgrading any remaining RDS 2016 instances to 2019 that September. Here's what your monitoring should do about the version cliff, and how the Microsoft SQL Server Plug-in for Oracle Enterprise Manager flags what's stranded and follows your databases to 2017 through 2025 on Windows and Linux.

Jul 8, 2026

The DR-Readiness Gap: Why "Synchronized" Isn't "Safe" in MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2
Blog

The DR-Readiness Gap: Why "Synchronized" Isn't "Safe" in MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2

Every HA tool shows you a synchronization state. Almost none of them, by default, tells you how much data you'd lose or how long recovery would take if you failed over right now. Here's the DR-readiness gap in MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2, and why the answer belongs in the Oracle Enterprise Manager repository.

Jul 1, 2026

The Plant Floor Has a Visibility Problem. A New Community Wants to Fix It.
Blog

The Plant Floor Has a Visibility Problem. A New Community Wants to Fix It.

A modern plant generates an enormous volume of data, yet the teams who run it often have little real-time visibility into what's actually happening. Here's why industrial observability is so hard, why OpenTelemetry is a credible answer, and how the new OpenTelemetry Industrial community is organizing to close the gap.

Jun 26, 2026

The Backup You Can't See: The Database Backup Blind Spot in MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2
Blog

The Backup You Can't See: The Database Backup Blind Spot in MySQL, SQL Server, and DB2

Your observability stack alerts on CPU, connections, and replication lag. Out of the box, it rarely tells you whether last night's backup succeeded — or whether you could actually recover. Here's the backup blind spot, and why it belongs in the Oracle Enterprise Manager console.

Jun 22, 2026

OpenTelemetry Goes Deeper and Wider: Profiling Hits Alpha, and OTel Heads to the Factory Floor
Blog

OpenTelemetry Goes Deeper and Wider: Profiling Hits Alpha, and OTel Heads to the Factory Floor

OpenTelemetry's fourth signal, profiling, entered public Alpha in March 2026, while a parallel community effort is bringing OTel to OT and Industry 4.0 systems. Here's what both mean for closing the last observability gaps.

Jun 9, 2026

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