Red Gate Software has recently opened up its SQL Response v2 Early Release Program (EAP), and is inviting anyone who is interested to download the application, test it, and provide feedback. This is your opportunity to help SQL Response’s developers to create a great product that every DBA will want to use.

For those of you who are not familiar with SQL Response, it is a web-based SQL Server monitoring and alerting tool that can help reduce much of the drudgery of routine DBA tasks. Here are a few examples of what it can do.

• Monitor your SQL Server’s health and performance locally from your desk, or remotely from most any computer with a web browser, including many mobile devices.
• Your SQL Server instance’s health can be monitored at a global level (all instances at once), at the individual instance level, or on a per database level.
• Monitoring screens not only provide a real-time overview of SQL Server’s health, it collects historical data so you can go back into time and check out a server’s health at any point in time. This feature is great when you are trying to track down problems and need historical diagnostic data to help you better troubleshoot problems.
• Although SQL Response has the ability for real-time monitoring, you probably won’t be spending a lot of time watching the monitoring screens. Instead, you will be working on other projects. So if a problem should occur on a SQL Server instance, and you are busy doing something else, SQL Response can send you alerts vie e-mail so you always know if there are any problems with your servers, allowing you to be a proactive DBA.

This is just a few of the things that SQL Response does, and I don’t want to waste your time describing the product in detail. If any of the above features have grabbed your attention, then download the EAP and see for yourself how the application works.

As you might imagine, the SQL Response v2 EAP is not feature complete, nor is it bug-free. If you decide to try out the software, be sure that you install in on a test SQL Server box. On the other hand, you can use the EAP to monitor production servers, without risk, because SQL Response doesn’t install any software on the SQL Servers being monitored. Instead, it polls the servers remotely, which greatly reduces the overhead of collecting monitoring and alerting data.

To download the SQL Response v2 EAP, visit this webpage and sign-up. Once you sign up, you will receive an email with a link to download the software, in addition to other links you can use to provide feedback on the release. In fact, if you provide lots of feedback on the EAP, you may even be able to win some prizes, which are described in the email you will receive. So check out the EAP today and see how you can contribute to its success.