Is there a need for real-time monitoring tools? Budget Time...

  • It's budget time and I'm trying to determine what tools to purchase in 2006. 

    Have you found it beneficial to have a real time monitoring tool such as SQL Diagnostic Manager (SQLdm) by Idera or Spotlight from Quest Software?  I've traditionally used Perfmon for monitoring SQL Servers over a period of time, but was curious if a real time monitoring tool would be worth the money.  I have a new employer, where I am the only DBA supporting over 50 production SQL Servers and 6 development servers.  It will take some time before I can implement various scripts to alert me of hardware or SQL Server performance issues so I'm hoping a tool or two can help, at least with our more critical servers.

    I'm also looking into purchasing SQLCompare, by Red-Gate, and LiteSpeed, by Quest.  Litespeed would only be used initially on one server, where the backup is 200GB.  Any thoughts on these tools would be helpful.

    Thanks,   Dave

  • I can't tell you anything about the real-time monitoring tools.  But I can tell you that Litespeed and SQLCompare are both well worth the $$.  They've both saved countless hours of time, etc. 



    A.J.
    DBA with an attitude

  • How about Red-Gate's SQL Log Rescue vs. Lumigent's Log Explorer?  Have you tried either?

    Dave

  • How about MOM 2005 - it does SQL Servers very well fir the SQL Management Pack ... an adding selling point is that it can and will monitor all of the Windows servers in your enterprise. We have 200+ Windows servers and 25+ SQL Servers being monitored 24x7 !

    RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."

  • We have MOM and it works well for monitoring the SQL Server services, disk space, backups and Event Logs, but I wasn't aware it could monitor the perfmon objects and counters like one of these third-party tools.  Are you certain it can do this? 

    Thanks,  Dave

  • Just what counters, etc in perfmon are you looking to do monitor Dave ?

    RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."

  • I use Spotlight on SQL from Quest - great tool.

    I've also got Log Explorer (don't use it as much as I thought I would)

    I'm also in the process of building a MOM 2005 server.

    Someone else mentioned LiteSpeed and SQL Compare (red gate) - I agree totally.

    -Neil

  • I too came from the days of using Windows perfmon.  I know use Spotlight instead and I think it is well work the money.  Not only do you get basic performance data from Windows, you get very detailed SQL Server performance data that you can drill down to details.  I've only used it a handfull of times, but I'm already loving it compared to Windows perfmon. 

    Depending on which Windows performance counters you are looking to monitor, you may also want to download and configure PSSDiag from Microsoft.  Here's the white papers and download: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsqldev/html/sqldev_12072004.asp

     

    As far as notifications go, I'm not sure if either Spotlight or PSSDiag can send out notifications when thresholds are reached. 

    John Rowan

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    Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help[/url] - by Jeff Moden

  • We use SQL Diagnostic Manager and like it.  Provides us with both real-time and historical data about the servers as well as alerting when thresh holds are exceeded.

    Idera lets you download their products for the 30 day evalautions for free.  http://www.idera.com.

    May want to check them out.

    --Joshua

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