The Buffer Pool component monitors the one or more buffer pools allocated for the database or partition. A buffer pool is memory that temporarily stores data and index pages from the database. If an application needs to read a data or index page and that page is already in the buffer pool, the application reads the page from the buffer pool—a process that is faster than retrieving the page from disk. Avoiding disk I/O is a critical issue when you are trying to improve database performance.
Buffer Pool
At each refresh, Spotlight captures the following statistics and displays them for the Buffer Pool component.
Overall Hit Rate—The percentage of all read requests for data and index pages that were satisfied by a page found in the buffer pool. If the buffer pool hit rate is low, an alarm becomes current on this component. You can modify the threshold ranges for this alarm.
Index Hit Rate—The percentage of all read requests for index pages that were satisfied by a page found in the buffer pool. If the index hit rate is low, an alarm becomes current on this component. You can modify the threshold ranges for this alarm.
At each refresh the number of logical reads statistic is captured but not displayed for this component. The number of logical reads is the percentage of all read requests for index pages that were satisfied by a page found in the buffer pool.
Click the Buffer Pool component to open the Buffer Pools (I/O) drilldown. This drilldown provides details about the buffer pools in the database or partition that you are monitoring.
Alternatively, you can right-click on the component icon and select the Databases drilldown. The I/O Activity tab on the drilldown is in immediate focus to help you pinpoint buffer-pool related problems in the database or partition.
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