SSMS 17.x and missing Utility Explorer

  • So we have a SQL 2014 instance set up on our monitoring server to run UCP. Up until now we viewed the UCP dashboards, etc, through Utility Explorer in SSMS for 2014.

    Now we have installed SSMS 17.3 on our monitoring server to manage the new Sql 2016 instances coming onstream (with Polybase, etc) which is fine, but there's no Utility Explorer in SSMS 17, apparently.

    Do we still need to run SSMS 2014 side by side with SSMS 17.x to view UCP dashboards? That seems daft. Any news on UCP and Utility Explorer in 2016 world?

  • I believe UCP is being abandoned as essentially no one used it. I think you will need SSMS 16.x or earlier, which should still be on your machine. Might keep media for 2014 around for this reason.

  • OK, good to know re UCP. Thanks for the tip. In all honesty, I can't say I've ever found any real-world use for it as production DBA, it was more of a box-ticking exercise for the customer, tbh.

    It's a perfectly reasonable decision if uptake is not enough to justify further development. It would be nice if MS would be a bit more up-front about these decisions though, in a large corporate environment it's easier to get buy-in in for "we need to look for a replacement for UCP" (particularly if there's potentially licencing cost involved) if MS announce that they won't be doing any further development for it.

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