Jun 04 2012

Nearly 100,000 database operations a minute at 3ms per! (we’re fast)

Category: Availability,Fleet Tracking,Fleet Tracking System,GPS Fleet Tracking,GPS Tracking — rdonat @ 11:09 am

During peak hours, we see quite a bit of database activity.

Our customers’ vehicles are reporting every minute or two typically, and they are querying to see where they’re at using maps, reports, alerts, and API’s CONSTANTLY during peak hours.

On a very busy day, last Friday, 6/1/12 (the day all the monthly reports for May are generated), this is what our 2 busiest databases looked like:

GPS Insight database utilization through the day

GPS Insight database utilization through the day

Note that the top of this graph is only 50% of total utilization, and we have a sustained, average peak utilization of just 15% of capacity.  Click the graph for a VERY large version.

This is our second busiest database, with a little more detail on what the various “hills” in utilization mean (batch processing, monthly reports, etc.) — again, the top of the graph is only 50% of utilization:

GPS Insight database utilization through the day

GPS Insight database utilization through the day

We are barely scratching the surface of our database’s capacity.  The same is the case for all our other systems which comprise the GPS Insight product.

(By the way, green means disk utilization, and red means memory utilization)

So what does this mean to our customers?

I just took a quick look today at just how many, and just how fast the typical query comes back during peak hours (10:30 PST is a peak time for us across the US):

We have systems in place to capture literally all of the nearly 100,000 queries per minute which hit these two busiest databases — here I simply choose the last 5 minutes to see everything which ran and run reports/statistics on it:

Showing last 5 minutes worth of database activity

Showing last 5 minutes worth of database activity

The data is loaded in just a few seconds:

Loading hundreds of thousands of logged database statements in seconds

Loading hundreds of thousands of logged database statements in seconds

And among the various reports I can run, we see what is called “service level” — this is how quickly we typically return the nearly 100,000 database queries (SQL) per minute which we receive throughout our system:

~3 millisecond response times

~3 millisecond response times on our busiest database server

~3 millisecond response times

~3 millisecond response times on our 2nd busiest database server

For these two database servers, we processed over 465,000 commands in 5 minutes, with an average response time of roughly 3.3 milliseconds (ms = thousandth of a second).

99.8% were taken care of in less than 200 ms.

That is a lot of processing for our customers’ benefit, and very fast, as well.

We keep our systems as responsive as possible in order to ensure to you that your vehicles’ locations, your API calls, and your reports and alerts will always be very fast and always available to you.  Bear in mind each database server has at least one “twin” which is always in sync, should it ever experience a failure.

Also, please realize that we are processing 1550 operations per SECOND on these 2 servers at a 3 ms. average response time.  That’s FAST.

Hopefully this helps you to understand what we do behind the scenes to manage your data and make it very fast for you to retrieve to help run your business.

Thanks,

Rob.

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Jun 02 2012

New Hierarchy Editor available within GPS Insight

Category: Ease of use,Extreme Return on Investment,GPS Fleet Tracking,GPS Tracking,Hierarchy,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 6:00 pm

Our first Hierarchy Editor served us fine for large customers using our Hierarchy capabilities.  However, as customers got bigger, they had more requirements, and we just launched a brand new version of this editor today.

If you don’t already have the Hierarchy capability turned on within GPS Insight call support or your salesperson (if you are a large customer, it’s worthwhile, but it’s overkill if you don’t have a few hundred vehicles).

Here is how you launch it within the GPS Insight portal:

Launching GPS Insight's Hierarchy Editor

Launching GPS Insight's Hierarchy Editor

Then you will be taken to the new editor:

New GPS Insight Hierarchy Editor

New GPS Insight Hierarchy Editor

Some of the nice new and previously available capabilities include:

You are able to see ALL object types assigned to a node at once and expand them:

See all objects associated with a Hierarchy Node at once

See all objects associated with a Hierarchy Node at once

You can Minimize them easily with one click of the “minus’ at the top of any group:

Collapse a tree easily
Collapse a tree easily

And you can easily drag and drop any unassigned objects after filtering them (in this case, we entered “ba” to restrict to those vehicles containing “ba” and then selected two, and assigned them to the “BAK” branch which had been selected on the far left):

Drag and drop to assign vehicles, landmarks, etc.

Drag and drop to assign vehicles, landmarks, etc.

Additionally, the custom hierarchy group editor has this new look and feel:

Hierarchy Custom Group Editor

Hierarchy Custom Group Editor

One of the nicest capabilities is the ability to scroll should you expand the hierarchy tree taller than your window — that was always a restriction in the last version.

Please let us know if you are interested in using the hierarchy and we will work with you to ensure it is made available appropriately.

Thanks,

Rob.

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Feb 05 2011

New Garmin Canned Messages interface

Category: Company Efficiency,Ease of use,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Garmin Features,Safety — rdonat @ 4:38 pm

We have recently given customers the ability to store “canned messages” on their drivers’ Garmin in the vehicle.

This allows them to choose from a list of commonly sent messages, rather than have to type each one out on the mini-keyboard on each Garmin.

Here’s how you do it:

Open the Garmin page:

Open the Garmin interface

Open the Garmin interface

Choose the Canned Messages tab and then create new messages, assign them to message groups, and assign those message groups to vehicles:

GPS Insight Garmin Canned Messages Interface

GPS Insight Garmin Canned Messages Interface

Create a message:

Create a Canned Message

Create a Canned Message

Assign it to a group of messages:

Assign Garmin canned messages to groups

Assign Garmin canned messages to groups

Then assign them to vehicles:

Assign message groups to vehicles

Assign message groups to vehicles

Then press “Sync Now” and your messages will be “pushed” to the appropriate vehicle’s Garmin.

To send one from your Garmin to dispatch,  follow these steps:

Push Dispatch

Push Dispatch

Push Messages

Push Messages

Push "Quick Message"

Push "Quick Message"

Then up comes a list of “your” quick (canned) messages.  Scroll through to select the one you want:

Choose a Canned Message

Choose a Canned Message

The Garmin will then prompt you if you want to send OR EDIT the canned message, so you can make small changes, such as add an amount, change a time, etc.

This definitely beats using the small on-screen keyboard to send free-form/ad-hoc messages:

Edit a canned message

Edit a canned message

Keyboard interface for editing a canned message

Keyboard interface for editing a canned message

And here’s the message, in “red” to indicate it’s new and un-read.  Once you click on it, it turns back to white:

Canned Message in the Garmin dashlet

Canned Message in the Garmin dashlet

This will help our customers enable their drivers to communicate more effectively, and help avoid the potential for distracted texting on their Garmin.

Rob.

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