Postgres Enterprise Manager 8.0: Webhooks for Event-Based Integrations

This has been an exciting year for Postgres Enterprise Manager (PEM), EDB’s tool for managing, monitoring, and tuning your PostgreSQL deployment at scale. We’ve kept in mind that while customers need a PostgreSQL-specific management tool, needs are different between those who use it as their primary solution, while others want to configure PEM to their needs, and then sync and relay metrics, diagnostics, and alerts between other IT tools already in their infrastructure.

With that in mind, we would like to highlight the most relevant additions and upgrades in PEM 8.0.

Webhooks

While SNMP traps and our REST API are able to provide convenient integrations with popular tools like Kibana and Grafana, there are other needs for pushing relevant data and diagnostics to IT Management Systems (ITSMs). One of the most common requests we hear is for more integration options with ServiceNow. This certainly makes sense, given it has over 50% market share according to Gartner.

Webhooks now provide a third option for simplifying your setup. Instead of polling via API, you can create an automatic push based on a triggering event to the client(s) of your choice. Each JSON-formatted response has a wide variety of options for variables, key/value pairs, and additional headers. Alerts via webhooks are similar in function to email groups, and each alert level can support multiple endpoints and customizations down to the individual alert level.

Alert details

Right in line with our efforts to improve interoperability, the API responses and webhooks now contain more detailed data on: alert errors, table bloat, and dead/live tuples, among others. These additional data points can be crucial when troubleshooting urgent issues, and these additional details can feed right into your IT Management and alerting tools.

Performance diagnostics

Previously only available for EDB Postgres Advanced Server, PEM 8.0 is certified for PostgreSQL 10 or above with the installation of the new edb_wait_states plugin for PostgreSQL. This is an important update for customers who want to stick with open source PostgreSQL and have chosen a Standard EDB subscription plan for EDB’s enterprise support and tools.

Security

Our security guide has had a major update as well. It’s an in-depth look at best practices to consider when configuring both Postgres Enterprise Manager and the Apache web server. And as always, there are a number of security updates to PEM itself.

These are just the key highlights of this PEM release; there’s plenty more to peruse in our detailed release notes. We’re always working to make PEM the most comprehensive PostgreSQL console in the industry, and give our customers the flexibility they require to use it in modern architectures. Upgrade now to truly get the most out of Postgres.

To learn more, make sure to register for our upcoming webinar on Postgres Enterprise Manager on December 16.