November 30, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Let me preface this by saying, I know this is a Red Gate site.
We are currently running Orion by Solarwinds for server monitoring, but for monitoring SQL it seems there is a lot of hoops I have to jump through to get the information I want.
Is anyone familiar with both of these products enough to tell me (objectively) what I will gain from SQL Monitor that I don't currently have in Orion (aside from ease of use)? I really would like to purchase this product but I want to know that I'm getting a level of capability that I don't currently already have. Furthermore, I need to be able to sell my boss on that. I have tried the free trial version, but I installed it on my desktop and I'm sure it's the disk I/Os that killed my trial. I added about 8 of our busiest servers to the configuration and it soon crashed my workstation. Now I can't even load the Base Monitor service without crashing, long enough to eliminate servers from the configuration. But in the short time I had I really liked what I saw.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
November 30, 2011 at 3:55 pm
The first question that you have to ask is what you are looking to monitor. I know that SolarWinds has some alerting and monitoring that plays well with SQL Server so that is certainly an option. What you probably won't get from them is the view into the internals of what is going on, i.e. expensive queries, memory use breakdown for SQL Server, disk I/O per file, drive, and many other items that you are going to get from your SQL Server monitoring tools.
So, the best thing to do is ask what you need to collect / monitor and then make sure that SolarWinds does all that. If not find the tool that does or use the free tools to collect and present it yourself.
Enjoy.
David
@SQLTentmaker“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot
November 30, 2011 at 4:01 pm
I would probably not used all 8 for my trial but chosen 1 or 2..
As far as Orion and SQL Mon, the organization I work for has both and for a while was using both. However my experience was the Orion required way to much customization to make it useful as well as that I didn't get near the depth of information I get from SQL Mon. We deactivated all SQL monitoring except service up/down and strictly use SQL Mon now. I am not at all unhappy with this choice.
A feature that I really like but seems so minor overall is that if an agent job fails then when you look at the event it indicates whether the job has run successfully since. It doesn't seem like much but most of my jobs if they fail and run successfully later I don't need to do anything so if it has run successfully all I need to do is clear it.
I do a couple different levels of monitoring. For most alerts it just goes to my mailbox, for just a couple I have it go to my mailbox and the email associated with my phone so I get paged. I can do this by event and by server, but I try to keep the rules the same accross the board.
Not sure how much this answered your question but I like SQL Mon.
CEWII
November 30, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Both very good information. Yeah, I should have started with one or two. Especially with the repository on a single drive workstation.
As for what I want to monitor... that is the question of the day. Orion can already tell us when drives are full, etc. But it is so cumbersome, and I don't want to have to use it all the time, especially when the server guys already have it set up the way it makes sense to them. I think what I discovered in the brief time I had with the trial, is that I didn't realize how much information I could get, that could lead me to be able to help performance tune SQL boxes. Being very young in the world of SQL administration, and the only DBA we have, I need all the help I can get staying on top of just SQL.
Thanks for the help!
Cheers,
Tom
November 30, 2011 at 4:26 pm
Any good free tools out there you can recommend that I can play around with?
November 30, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I don't know of any free tools that do the monitoring that is like SQL Monitor. There are some that do some baselining and capturing of information on Codeplex, but you use them at your own risk, and I'm not sure how much support you would get.
You can play with Monitor at monitor.red-gate.com and see what it reports on the SQLServerCentral servers.
If you're stuck with your workstation, I'd contact Red Gate support and ask for help in removing it or reconfiguring the monitoring for a few servers.
December 1, 2011 at 8:05 am
That's a good idea. Thanks for your help.
December 1, 2011 at 8:10 am
Let me preface this by saying, I know this is a Red Gate site.
I didn't know that.
December 1, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Yep, the red box in the upper right corner saying "a community service from redgate" is kind of a give-away.. However, I have yet to see anybody from redgate ding anyone for talking about products that compete with redgate's. This forum is open to questions about other's products as well.
CEWII
December 2, 2011 at 12:56 am
Elliott Whitlow (12/1/2011)
Yep, the red box in the upper right corner saying "a community service from redgate" is kind of a give-away.. However, I have yet to see anybody from redgate ding anyone for talking about products that compete with redgate's. This forum is open to questions about other's products as well.CEWII
When I joined SSC I read SSC history and till date I had a feeling Brian still owns it. I re-visited SSC About US today and found following.
"In November 2006, Andy and Brian made the decision to move on to other SQL Server ventures and the site was sold to Red Gate software."
Literally I must kick myself (if I can) for not knowing major fact about a forum where I spend most my time.
December 2, 2011 at 6:21 am
Dev (12/2/2011)
Literally I must kick myself (if I can) for not knowing major fact about a forum where I spend most my time.
I guess I understand but the reality is that this forum has not changed at all since that time in how any question is dealt with. There has never been a sales presence on here, aside from the banners. So, I really see this as a non-issue and greatly appreciate the limited footprint that Red-Gate has kept on here. Just my opinion though.
And, what other forum has all the great posters that this one does? 😛
David
@SQLTentmaker“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose” - Jim Elliot
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