Case Study: Betfair achieves granular, low‑overhead database monitoring and faster issue resolution with AppDynamics

Betfair chooses not to gamble with database performance

Betfair, the world’s leading online betting exchange processing about 5 million transactions a day and more than 300 bets a second, faced fleeting but business‑critical database slowdowns—sometimes lasting as little as 15 seconds—that traditional tools missed. They needed production‑safe, low‑overhead monitoring with very fine granularity and support for Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL to profile performance during load tests and quickly pinpoint short‑duration bottlenecks.

Betfair adopted AppDynamics for Databases, an agentless, easy‑to‑install solution that delivers selectable granularity (routinely 10‑second slices), cross‑platform visibility and under 1% CPU overhead. The tool sped root‑cause analysis (for example identifying CPU spikes from execution‑plan shifts and increased logical I/O), simplified load‑test comparisons, enabled faster releases and troubleshooting, and allowed deployment on Betfair’s busiest servers—reducing investigation time and improving customer experience.

Betfair

Nigel Noble

Sr. Performance DBA