October 20, 2010 at 4:44 am
Hi
I am looking for a list of 3rd party scheduling and monitoring software for SSIS packages. We use DataStage as our primary ETL tool but pockets of SSIS packages have popped up and we have no way of visually monitoring them or putting them into appropriate schedules and workflows. Does anybody have a definitive list of 3rd party tools out there that do this. I think the only 1 that I have come across is something from SQL Sentry but it looks a bit flakey. Any feedback would be great.
Thanks
Paul
October 20, 2010 at 4:13 pm
I don't have a list but I have some questions/comments..
Any tool that can call an EXE file local to the SQL Server can start an SSIS package. But as far as monitoring that isn't easy. In all of my SSIS packages I have some required steps, these steps capture start/end time, package version including build version, so I can tell if a package has been changed and a few other things. I originally built the framework for an ETL process and came to the conclusion that all packages should find this useful.
What OS are you using on your destop, I do know of an app that might be able to help but it is visually sketchy on Win2008/Vista/Win7.
CEWII
October 21, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Hi Paul,
We use SQL Sentry's Event Manager for all our managed customers and it works brilliantly. The guys at SQLSentry are a good bunch too which makes it easy to discuss any additional requirements or feature requests with them. I really would suggest you get a trial license from their website and give it a go before you write it off 🙂
Regards,
Christian Bolton
MCA: SQL Server 2005, MCM: SQL Server 2005/8, SQL Server MVP
Technical Director - Coeo Ltd
October 21, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Hi Paul,
We don't use SQL Sentry's Event Manager, but we use the Performance Advisor, and they are integrated together (need a proper license to activate one side or the other or both). Having used PA for a while, it's not flaky at all. We rather like it and it's helped us monitor and right-size servers, such as with a recent data warehousing effort we just put into production. We looked at Event Manager and liked what we saw, but we use an enterprise scheduler that also interfaces with the mainframe and it has its own built-in monitoring and reporting. So we didn't go ahead with the Event Manager license.
If you have questions about Event Manager, contact the SQL Sentry folks. They are extremely easy to get in contact with and they aren't pushy at all like some vendors. They used to be a huge hosted SQL shop, and Event Manager and Performance Advisor were developed to solve their own internal needs. So they're quite proud of the products, as you might expect, and typically go above and beyond to ensure you get a fair shake-out of it in your own environment.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
October 21, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Paul,
Hate to just join in the club here, but I got to mention that I have used the product for a number of years and have not found the tool to be flaky at all. I would highly recommend the tool, I would recommend that you download it and give it a try. If you are concerned about talking with a sales person I am sure there are a number of people here that would be more than willing to help you out.
Chris
October 21, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Hey Paul -
I use SQL Sentry EM/PA in many environments I support also. No flakiness noticed when I use it normally. Can you be a bit more specific? Maybe someone could help you out more. I find a lot of poorly performing statements with the tool, including those that are executed from within the context of SSIS. Also great for seeing if I have a job schedule conflict/missed job or a job running over/under "normal" execution times.
Let us know a bit more about your needs and what you are seeing and I am sure someone can help out.
__________________________________________________
Mike Walsh
SQL Server DBA
Blog - www.straightpathsql.com/blog |Twitter
October 21, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I've also implemented a few job chains and that is one of the features that I really liked in SQL Sentry's EM. Basically, we wanted to run some tasks in parallel after one task finished. So we used the job chain to link them together, execute a group of jobs after one finishes and then execute a final step after all 3 of the parallel tasks finished. These were all on the same server, but I believe you can schedule across servers and even toss control between SQL Server and Windows Task Scheduler jobs.
__________________________________________________
Mike Walsh
SQL Server DBA
Blog - www.straightpathsql.com/blog |Twitter
October 26, 2010 at 5:42 am
Thanks everyone for the replies. My view on SQL Sentry was incorrectly concluded from 2 sources. One being some friends who had seen it years ago and 2 the screenshots on the website don't do it justice. I will certainly be giving it a try.
Thanks
Paul
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