MySQL in financial services

MySQL has a well deserved popularity as the backend database for both small and large websites. With ever increasing features, reliability and performance it has now also found it's way into many other areas including those which traditionally have used more expensive proprietary relational database systems.

When one of Australia's largest financial services companies required support and advice in ensuring their MySQL infrastructure remained performant, operational and secure they turned to Remora. We have provided ongoing support to IOOF over several years, helping ensure that their mainstay business and trading applications continued to work in a fast, secure and reliable manner. MySQL is now used in vital applications across the IOOF organisation, proving it's utility in mission critical systems.

Monitoring MySQL with Splunk

Splunk provides a platform upon which custom monitoring systems can be built quickly and easily. Many apps exist at http://splunkbase.com providing monitoring and visibility for different hardware and software platforms, however none existed for the MySQL database.

When REA group were looking to increase visibility of their MySQL server performance and pre-empt problems, having Remora tailor a solution on Splunk was a good choice. This monitor integrates with their other Splunk monitoring allowing not just visibility of changes in their MySQL performance but how that performance is affected by web traffic or internal systems. When built the Splunk MySQL application allowed us to find and fix several problems with their database performance before they caused any serious problems.

The Splunk MySQL monitor application will soon be implemented again at one of Austrlia's largest online retailers.

Content protection with Splunk

Detection of content misuse is a business priority for many online companies, with their unique content being the primary value of their business. Splunk not only allows IT oriented monitoring of log data, but also to use this data to provide business intelligence.

Remora built a Splunk application that analysed web traffic from one of Australia's busiest websites in near real time to detect scraping of content. Using the statistical functionality available Splunk and metrics derived from known traffic patterns of bots we were able to identify many client IP addresses scraping content, and provide business users with the knowledge required to further investigate.