November 28, 2008 at 6:53 am
Hello,
It happened so fast, so I didn’t notice that I became a DBA.
First one Enterprise server, then two Standard editions, after some time I got two more Enterprise servers.
According to a company structure there is a tendency that I’ll get about 200 SQL servers with various versions to manage / administer.
For a current time I spent not much time to look true the LOG’s, HDD space and other things, by simply using Management Studio or simply connecting to server remotely.
But there should be better solution for this, more centralized.
I ask Google for a help I get lots of products which, after briefly looking to interface, are designed to manage no more then 10-50 servers.
What are you using for such big amounts of servers?
thanks.
November 28, 2008 at 7:25 am
Well that entirely depends upon ur reqirement and whats the price you are willing to pay, if its just a basic monitoring as you said then you can use the latest product from Red-Gate, SQL Response, as i said there are more products out there on the market, what exactly are you looking to monitor ??? 🙂
November 28, 2008 at 7:26 am
Have you looked at Operations Manager?
Are you also going to be responsible for end-to-end monitoring and alerting of the Operating System, e.g. drive space, services, patches, etc.?
November 28, 2008 at 7:39 am
CrazyMan (11/28/2008)
Well that entirely depends upon ur reqirement and whats the price you are willing to pay, if its just a basic monitoring as you said then you can use the latest product from Red-Gate, SQL Response, as i said there are more products out there on the market, what exactly are you looking to monitor ??? 🙂
One day, my boss came to me and told "administrators will give you the rights to the servers A, B and C from now on You're DBA"
I like to look at server load numbers, graphics, but its good thing as long as it's small number of servers.
What to monitor.. hm.. as i understand from my boss, I must ensure 24/7 SQL availability. HW and OS is not a part of my job, but I must act as an adviser when setting new servers.
the only thing that wasn't assigned for is server tuning, but as I see, I'll get it too, maybe next year (but this is not a question I asking for)
I need a tool or an advice how to make monitoring and ensure that all servers are running.
the price... thats the main problem, I already asked "what price can we pay for managing tools" the answer was "1$"
my boss thinks that my salary is already the price for monitoring tools, stuff, pended time.
November 28, 2008 at 7:43 am
kendal.vandyke (11/28/2008)
Have you looked at Operations Manager?Are you also going to be responsible for end-to-end monitoring and alerting of the Operating System, e.g. drive space, services, patches, etc.?
I'll look at hat product, thanks.
things like drive space is my matter, because we already had an incident when DB's almost stopped and the only man who noticed this - was me.
so I see that things that are important and are direct connected to SQL work quality is my part of monitoring.
November 28, 2008 at 7:44 am
Thats the answer u get from all Bosses regardless of what when it comes to spending, i would suggest then to use SQL response from red-gate which is resonable priced( actually low priced) when compared to other produts. its avaliable for trail, download it and see how you fell, this gives almost all sorts of monitoring and alerts you as well
Hmm 24X7 avaliablilty, one easy word to say, but its a bit hard in realtime,
try this and let us know 🙂
December 9, 2008 at 7:02 am
well, I've tried Red Gate SQL Response
hm, interesting tool, all the information I need at my fingertips (is this the right phrase? 🙂
but
when the price is too hi for us:
bundle - 10lic - 400 each
but I need 200+ lic...
nope, there is no way company will by it.
ok, now its time for a Operations Manager to show up on stage.
December 9, 2008 at 7:17 am
You could also try SQLH2 and Performance Dashboard tools.
-Roy
December 9, 2008 at 8:00 am
SQLH2 is good for baselining. Performance Dashboard reports are good for reporting\troubleshooting on current activity. Neither are really suited for automated monitoring\alerting. I'm not saying don't use them - just saying to understand where they're most useful for.
Since you're on a tight budget try Spiceworks[/url] for OS\hardware monitoring. You should at least make sure your servers and services are runnings and have adequate disk space and this tool will do that for you.
December 10, 2008 at 6:38 am
Microsoft puts out a monitoring freeware product call SQLH2. It is written in C# and the code comes with it so you can modify or add as you like. You can find it on the CodePlex site.
MG
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
Tony Hoare
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
December 10, 2008 at 2:57 pm
How many databases on each server? Is it necessary to have so many servers? Can they share the servers by different categories or line of businesses? Nowadays, consolidation is buzzword.
When the server number grows, cost and all related costs go up.
December 10, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I think the bigger question to ask here is why are you going to be managing 200 + SQL Servers? Do you have 200 different databases?
Why is this happening? To be blunt you need to manage the expectation that you can affordably put 200 sql servers out there and have them used well and managed by one person. This is going to make an issue for you in the future as you will probably be the person they go to when they want to combine all 200 onto one server.
Conan
December 10, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Moderis,
In an environment of that size, automation is going to be your key. You can go out and spend thousands of dollars licensing tools to do the job for you, or you can use code to do it for you. I did a LiveMeeting for the PASS DBA Special Interest Group on Automating Common DBA Tasks that should cover most of what you are looking at doing:
http://www.sqlpass.org/Community/SIGs/DatabaseAdministrationSIG/tabid/80/Default.aspx
In addition, I have posted all of my own personal automation source code online for free reuse. You can find the links on my blog:
http://jmkehayias.blogspot.com/2008/12/automating-common-dba-tasks.html
I would second, third, fourth, whatever position I am in, the recommendation to use SQLH2 for performance counter collection, and change reporting, along with the SQLH2 Reports pack for reporting services. We have MOM/SCOM, Solarwinds, and one other tool that "can" monitor SQL Server. My problem has always been that these are managed by Server/network/operations team members, and their configurations and requirements never meet my own needs. SQLH2 is free, lightweight and meets my needs just fine.
I don't have a environment that is 200 servers deep, but when I hear about environments that are that large for production, my initial thought is that the DBA is not in control of SQL Server. I know that will spark arguments, but that is not the intent, and it certainly isn't a negative comment about the DBA, though it could be. I know a few SQL Experts who manage environments that are 200+ servers large, and to an extent they would openly admit that they don't control SQL Server the manage it.
I lucky to be in complete control of SQL Server at my job, so I decide when I need a new server or not. Multiple databases can run on the same server, and what I find happening at times is every project has to have its own server because the vendor says so and they won't support a shared server. I get that at my job as well, but I am willing to go to bat with any vendor who says something crazy like that. If you are in the scenario where the servers will grow to 200+ servers, automation is the only way you will keep from drowning.
Jonathan Kehayias | Principal Consultant | MCM: SQL Server 2008
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Troubleshooting SQL Server: A Guide for Accidental DBAs[/url]
December 10, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Hello again,
as I see some of You are interested in my situation, so I'll try to explain with more details:
I'm working in company which is a part of biggest my country corporation.
Corporation works in food and every day usage stuff retail selling.
My personal tasks are managing/administering of corporation SQL servers which are located in my country.
That includes main office servers ~10 and ~200 my country outlet servers - which are located in retail shops.
Those 200 uses different licenses: from express to standard - it depends on the size of shop.
We really don't want to consolidate all of them to one or three(basically shops are divided to tree categories); because of licenses, network load and a money which would be needed for buying 1-3 really big servers.
So,
we have 1:1 servers, one HW - one SQL instance
the number of databases per instance from single to 30
I'm the only person dedicated as DBA.
the things I won't do is the SQL query tuning -this is the software developers job (other company)
currently there is no person for even HW server monitoring.
I guess situation is bad but not critical, the budget is almost 0 [is this because of "crisis" 🙂 ], I'm trying to be as much positive as I can.
December 10, 2008 at 11:49 pm
thanks Jonathan for Your post.
You may be right, I'm not in a control.. its like they controling me... sad but true.
But there is not mutch I can do.
Servers are located in different cities, I think that managers also understands that consolidation would realy help me/them/company to control all of them. I even tryed to present them what they will get as a bonus - like real time data analysis from one source.
But as allways.... after mentioning the project price, the project is stopped before even starting analyse it.
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