Monitoring Disk Space and Sending Alerts with TSQL

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Monitoring Disk Space and Sending Alerts with TSQL

Haidong Ji

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Points: 2453
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August 10, 2003 at 12:00 am

#106434

Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/hji/monitoringdiskspaceandsendingalertswithtsql.asp

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nap_parikh SSC Veteran Points: 209 More actions · Answer 1

Previously it was giving error because i didn't have SQL Mail in Support Services.

Now it works fine for me. This is perfect.

Thanks

Guus Kramer Ten Centuries Points: 1031 More actions · Answer 2

Haidong Ji,

Try the next script (no e-mail part attached but it schoudn't be that difficult to add it);

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_diskspace] AS

/*

Displays the free space,free space percentage

plus total drive size for a server

*/

SET NOCOUNT ON

DECLARE @hr int

DECLARE @fso int

DECLARE @drive char(1)

DECLARE @odrive int

DECLARE @TotalSize varchar(20)

DECLARE @MB bigint ; SET @MB = 1048576

CREATE

TABLE #drives (

drive char(1) PRIMARY KEY,

FreeSpace int NULL,

TotalSize int NULL)

INSERT

#drives(drive,FreeSpace) EXEC master.dbo.xp_fixeddrives

EXEC

@hr=sp_OACreate 'Scripting.FileSystemObject',@fso OUT

IF

@hr <> 0 EXEC sp_OAGetErrorInfo @fso

DECLARE

dcur CURSOR LOCAL FAST_FORWARD

FOR SELECT drive from #drives

ORDER by drive

OPEN

dcur

FETCH NEXT FROM dcur INTO @drive

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS=0

BEGIN

EXEC @hr = sp_OAMethod @fso,'GetDrive', @odrive OUT, @drive

IF @hr <> 0 EXEC sp_OAGetErrorInfo @fso

EXEC @hr = sp_OAGetProperty @odrive,'TotalSize', @TotalSize OUT

IF @hr <> 0 EXEC sp_OAGetErrorInfo @odrive

UPDATE #drives

SET TotalSize=@TotalSize/@MB

WHERE drive=@drive

FETCH NEXT FROM dcur INTO @drive

END

CLOSE dcur

DEALLOCATE dcur

EXEC

@hr=sp_OADestroy @fso

IF

@hr <> 0 EXEC sp_OAGetErrorInfo @fso

SELECT

drive,

FreeSpace as 'Free(MB)',

TotalSize as 'Total(MB)',

CAST((FreeSpace/(TotalSize*1.0))*100.0 as int) as 'Free(%)'

FROM #drives

ORDER BY drive

DROP

TABLE #drives

RETURN

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Select the outcome from all your serers (using a databaselink) into a local "gathering-table"

create

table Disk_Capp (Servername varchar(40), Volume varchar(5),FreeMb int, TotalMb int, FreePCT integer, date datetime, runnum integer)

--The @runnum is a counter for each time you execute this script to keep track on history in the DISK_CAPP table

SET @Query ='INSERT Disk_Capp SELECT '''+@servername+''',*,cast(getdate() as varchar(20)),'+cast(@runnum as varchar(10))+' FROM OPENQUERY( [DBA_'+@servername+'],''SET FMTONLY OFF;EXEC master.dbo.sp_diskspace'')'

exec ( @Query )

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Mention that the you are authorized to use the SP_OAxxxxx procedures (open and close using the DBlinks 1 and 0 )

SET @Query_c1 ='declare @var1 varchar(3000)

set @var1 = ''EXEC [DBA_'+@servername+'].master.dbo.sp_configure ''show advanced options'',1 go reconfigure go''

exec (@var1)'

exec (@Query_c1)

SET @Query_c2 ='declare @var2 varchar(3000)

set @var2 = ''EXEC [DBA_'+@servername+'].master.dbo.sp_configure ''Ole Automation Procedure'',1 go reconfigure go''

exec (@var2)'

exec (@Query_c2)

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Hope you (or someone else) can use it. . .

GKramer

The Netherlands

Marius Els Right there with Babe Points: 763 More actions · Answer 3

Thank you Haidong Ji for your script.

And what a very interesting twist to the tale that Guus Kramer added!, very cool and useful!

SuperDBA-207096 SSCrazy Eights Points: 8176 More actions · Answer 4

Thank you Haidong!

I know I've used this one, or some variation of it before in the past, it's very useful!

OceanDeep Ten Centuries Points: 1078 More actions · Answer 5

It is good to know more than one way to do that. My question is why this is better than using performance monitor and its alert to do the same thing. Isn't it lesser work or resources by using performance monitor to track disk space and send alert?

SuperDBA-207096 SSCrazy Eights Points: 8176 More actions · Answer 6

I actually used this one in conjunction with xp_SMTP_sendmail can't remember the xact SProc name, but it's an add-in sproc, and it was quick and didn't add much load to the server.

bfraser SSC Enthusiast Points: 101 More actions · Answer 7

In our environment, we have RAID drives that allow unlimited growth. The only issue with that is that the DBA group doesn't set our databases to auto grow, so sometimes we hit the space limit set up for the particular database, even if we have plenty of disk space available.

Is there a way to write a stored proc to monitor & send an alert on the allocated disk space for a particular database?? That would be really useful for us.

Thanks!

John Carter-291289 Valued Member Points: 72 More actions · Answer 8

Love the article, but the presentation is the pits! I eventually copy/pasted the article in a text editor with word-wrap...

Bob Wright-325851 SSC Rookie Points: 36 More actions · Answer 9

There have been many articles on this subject and all them rely on xp_fixeddrives to report total and free disk space. This works well in smaller environments but in much larger environments, especially those including a SAN, this approach will fall short. Most larger organizations, ones which hire Sr. Level DBAs are moving towards Mount Points on the Windows Servers. The lack of drive letters, the need to spread multi-terabyte databases over dozens of filegroups, failover and DR environment integration, all facilitate the need for a different approach to space consideration and how to address the disk space.

WMI and many other tools in our SQL bag of tricks, fail to recoginize mountpoints in the environment. If you xp_fixeddrives or even a WMIC query to look a drive which has a mount point with a terabyte of dataspace, all that is returned in the available space on the local disks. This is really not going to help you and trust me, it looks "strange" on a report which you show 1.1 terabytes of data on a 17 Gb disk with 16 Gb Free.

There are ways to gather this information in C#, such as walking the directory tree, and adding the functionality through an extended stored procedure but then you have to roll that out to all the servers and in secure/large environment, that is not always an easy or well received task.

The other factor to consider is support for the developed solution. Writing C# is great for many add-ons but not all DBAs are comfortable with creating, maintaining and/or deploying C# applications or SQL stored procedures/functions.

The lack of this particular functionality (ability easily and accurately determine available/used disk space) and other similar functionaility is concerning and leaves many DBAs, who want to maintian a TSQL codebase, even if it uses COM XPs, at the mercy fo the monitoring software vendors out there. Since CHKDSK can return the correct information on drives which have Mount Points, which is what I currently use to gather space information for TSQL by parsing the output, then I feel Microsoft should have updated the xp_fixeddrives routine to report the correct information or at least provided and documented a way of gathering that information. Especiallys since SQL Server is by far the greatest benefactor of utilizing mount points to store the large amounts of data the want to boast the capability of being able to address.

This article and the use of the email system is well thought out and helpful but not as much in larger SQL farms which managing the data environment is even more critical. I would also suggest adding a table in your database to store sent alerts (emails) and build in the functionality of storing the messages as part of the routine. This will allow someone to do historical reporting and analysis of the alerts, this one and others, which have been sent out over a period of time without being dependent on reviewing the emails through a mail server and its client or through a mail interface.

Bob Wright

Sr. DBA/.NET Architect/SQL Architect

Stephen Anderson-260031 SSC Veteran Points: 237 More actions · Answer 10

I have a number of servers that I need to monitor, both SQL Server 2000 and 2005. I use similar code with an SSIS package to collect this information from all my servers to one database on one server. SQL Server magazine had some articles (http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/95385/95385.html and http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/95745/95745.html) that had information on how to set this up. Of course, you need a subscription to the magazine to read the articles.

webrunner SSC-Dedicated Points: 31882 More actions · Answer 11

I saw the same problem. You can also click the "Print This!" button at the top of the article, and the print format has the word wrap on.

HTH,

webrunner

-------------------
A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html

j.a.c SSCrazy Points: 2283 More actions · Answer 12

Hi Bob,

If you are using Windows 2003 you can use WMI to get the mountpoint information that you need. Check out the Win32_Volume Class:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394515.aspx

Also you can query any 2003 box remotely using this class.

Andy

Yelena Varshal SSC-Dedicated Points: 34286 More actions · Answer 13

Andy,

with WMI you have to be an admin on the server to use it.

Regards,Yelena Varsha

Erin. SSCertifiable Points: 5237 More actions · Answer 14

This is a very useful script. I have been looking for something like this. However, can you tell me how to use database mail rather than xp_sendmail since "this feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Avoid using this feature in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use this feature.. To send mail from SQL Server, use Database Mail." (SQL Server 2005 Books Online)

Thanks!