Monitoring tools

  • As far as monitoring goes - another good tool is Confio Ignite[/url]. I did an eval of this tool and found it to be extremely helpful.

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

  • If you are looking for a simple monitoring tool for your SQL Agent job systems with vibrant visuals, you can check out SQL Agent Insight @ www.brentec.ca. The software is relatively new with new features being actively added. Email notification is there as well for any thresholds that are exceeded.

    Hope this is helpful.

    Regards.

  • My thanks to all of you for the great advice. Already looking actively at your recommendations! Best regards and Happy Holidays.

  • Idera's SQL diagonistic manager has been good in the fields you are requesting.

    Regards,

    Sushant

    Regards
    Sushant Kumar
    MCTS,MCP

  • System

    Centre

    Operations

    Manager

    from Microsoft is also pretty good. The SQL management packs were quite good. The benefit is that its Microsoft, the management packs are (were) written by the SQL team and the SCOM can be used monitor more than just SQL (Exchange, OS, etc, etc). SCOM uses an agent on the server, so you can monitor and see how much of an impact the agent has on the server.

    I used Idera at a previous place, and did not like it. It uses an agentless method and "pulls" information from the server. This can compound issues when a server is performing poorly.

  • I have worked with spotligt extensively .It is a great tool ,hoever the reports and trending out of the box is severly lacking in certain parts.They advocate that wroting your own reports is easy ,but I did find that it is not as easy as it looks .I wanted to write my own reports on th statistics that it gathered to build myself a dashboard like master report and from there drilldown into details (historically) ,not the realtime look that you get on the enterprise view or home screens in spotlight.I found it a bit cumbersome to

    get data out in a way that is intuitive and their metrics are named differently internally to what we might be used to ,so you have to digg into the model .Dont get me wrong I love spotlight and use it daily ,but it has its quirks like any other tool ,I just think it lacks a bit of flexibility.

    Sometimes gathering and interpreting perf stats in a way that "you" understand it and building a custom solution is a much easier solution than getting to know a third party products data structures and rerieving data from it .

    I suggest you also look at the Performance Datawarehouse and the associated Data Collector plumbing you can use to retrieve perf data and then use it as a base for developing your own reports and dashboards .

    At least when you make a change or require more details ,you know exactly where to make a change .

  • I've been using Quest's Spotlight for a couple years and Quest's Performance Analysis for Sql Server for about a year. Performance Analysis ( PASS ) is more of an analysis tool to show you what's going on over time and helps you create comparison reports, view poorly performing sql statements etc.

    Spotlight does let you configure alarms/alerts and send emails ( text messages to cell phones ) etc based on thresholds for things like CPU, IO wait, disk space etc. But I'm not sure yet if it can configured to only send an email/text if a bad condition is sustained ( ignore spikes ). It also has a reporting/trending module and users are writing new modules for that. So far I can't get the statistics repository database for the reporting/trending to work correctly but I know most others have had success with that.

    My boss wants me to find a way to alert us to SUSTAINED bad conditions. We don't want to get a wake up text message when cpu or IO spikes for a short time. We only want those when a serious condition is sustained for a time. So I'm looking into open source things like Nagios. Our Systems team already has Solar Winds Orion, but I need to see how and to what extent it's being used.

  • You may have already selected your monitoring tool, but I would still like to recommend taking a look at SQL Stripes.

    It's an all-over monitoring and controlling application specially designed for an environment with multiple SQL Servers.

    Have a look

    goo.gl/BMrQw

  • If you are looking to monitor the SQL Agent, give SQL Agent Insight a try. You can find it at http://www.brentec.ca. It will give a good overall picture of job status' along with alerting via email if core metrics deviate from configured thresholds.

    Regards.

  • I didn't see anyone mention it yet, but RedGate has recently announced V2 of their Monitor product. It does quite nicely I think.

    If you want something more high-end I highly recommend SQL Sentry's Performance Advisor product.

    Best,
    Kevin G. Boles
    SQL Server Consultant
    SQL MVP 2007-2012
    TheSQLGuru on googles mail service

  • Ive used Spotlight Enterprise manger as well as Foglight both by quest

    i would highly recommend Spotlight.. my experience with foglight to be honest not at all a tool i'd ever want to use again.

    With regards to Redgate monitor definitely an up and coming tool and one to keep an eye on...

    I’ve been using it quite recently and i am very happy with it (but definitely room for improvement)

    P.S use something other than IE when using regate monitor 🙂

  • I used this iPhone App that helps monitor SQL Server database instances from your mobile (Android / iOS) - http://www.sqlserverapp.com . No need to install anything on the monitored server - that's really cool, isn't it? It helps me stay alert on my SQL stats all the time, even if I get a call in the midnight on some issue. The Android App also has notification on failed SQL jobs!

  • Jean, please don't reply to 3 year old threads.

    Best,
    Kevin G. Boles
    SQL Server Consultant
    SQL MVP 2007-2012
    TheSQLGuru on googles mail service

  • While I agree about the overall sentiment, I think that there should be an automatic flag to set threads to R/O from the system then. Say, if last activity on thread was more than 1 year ago, set thread as R/O and prevent new posts. Better than telling people not to post on old threads which can be perceived negatively 🙂

  • ducon (7/2/2014)


    While I agree about the overall sentiment, I think that there should be an automatic flag to set threads to R/O from the system then. Say, if last activity on thread was more than 1 year ago, set thread as R/O and prevent new posts. Better than telling people not to post on old threads which can be perceived negatively 🙂

    Sorry, but I disagree. Your request requires development/testing/etc. effort from the SQLServerCentral.com team. This is a very-low need/benefit request that will always/should be outranked by more important site needs. Also, if someone takes a simple statement such as what I made negatively that isn't SSC.com's problem either. 🙂

    Best,
    Kevin G. Boles
    SQL Server Consultant
    SQL MVP 2007-2012
    TheSQLGuru on googles mail service

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