SQL Monitoring

  • Hi

    I'm relatively knew to administering SQL servers and was wanting peoples opinion on what is the best product for monitoring sql. I've come across 3 and was wondering whats peoples thoughts on them are:

    WhatsUpGold

    NetIQ AppManager for SQL

    Microsoft MOM Server

    Are there any other products that are recommended.

    Thanks for the help

    Peter Haase

  • Hi Peter,

    HP Openview has SQL Plug-ins, our Server support did use once for a couple of my servers and I got an alert once. But you have to have the client open to see your selected counters if you want an overall picture.

    I personally prefer SQL Server to monitor SQL servers. You can monitor almost anything you want if the services are up and you can use run a VB script using WMI objects to see IF the services are up. You do need someone to write you a couple of scripts and set up a couple of jobs but it may be cheaper then pay for the commertial product.

    You do need the understanding of the processes and SQL Server internals to interpret results from any tool

    Yelena 

    Regards,Yelena Varsha

  • I'm currently looking at Microsoft Health and History tool. So far it's looking great. I also have the performance collector and the standard reports in reporting services. Underneath it also uses WMI objects. It's free, so i didn't have to worry about budgets. The drawback is that is doesn't send alerts.

    I agree with Yelena that you do need understanding of processes and internals.


    Kindest Regards,

    Gimli

    If you are a spineless creature, they can't break you

  • I've used Netiq App Manager for a couple of years, however for the past three years I've been a MOM user. I haven't kept up with recent version of Netiq. As for MOM there were two factors which led us to adopt MOM

    1. Price -- significantly less expensive than Netiq

    2. Enterprise standard across all servers (web, Exchange, SQL)

    Out of the box MOM is very useful and does not require a great deal of customize and setup. This is a huge plus, you simply deploy and global rules able to all servers or server of a certain type. On the old versions of Netiq you had to configure rules for each server which was a real pain to maintain. MOM also integrates with HP insight manager for H/W monitoring. Having one enterprise solution versus each group having their own is another big plus. I would recommend against rolling your own monitoring unless you have a fairly small install base.

  • Thanks everyone for your comments.

    Peter

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