December 2, 2015 at 2:35 pm
Hi -
I'm exploring different tools to monitor our global SQL environment.
Currently, I use Confio (Solar Winds) with pretty solid success. I've tested SQL Sentry (w/out much success (underlying data not clean, doesn't match PerfMon or SQL DMV's, highest CPU consumers not accurate, Process heavy (consumes 3% CPU)).
I've done a POC with RedGate and Idera - but I'm looking for a more top CPU consumption view not a basic holistic view of the entire system.
So - is anyone leveraging System Center Operations Manager for SQL Server? Wondering how it performs compared to Confio/RedGate, Idera, etc...
Any information is appreciated.
Thanks.
December 2, 2015 at 5:04 pm
We use SCOM for all of our Windows monitoring including MSSQL.
Basic traffic light system is easy to use and there are many views to show you just new alerts, all current alerts or key performance views.
I find the instance summary dashboards helpful as you can filter for certain instances and have a more active vision of the key systems. e.g. I filter on PR to get all my production instances in 1 view. The only downside is this dashboard didn't ship with the 2014 management pack.
SCOM is highly configurable so expect to put the time in up front to get the real benefits. I can't stress this enough you get out what you put in
I've not used the Redgate software so can't give you a comparison. I have used spotlight on SQL (Quest/Dell) previously and found it very good but I believe it comes with a price.
Hope this helps
Corinne
December 2, 2015 at 5:59 pm
cheshirefox (12/2/2015)
Hi -I'm exploring different tools to monitor our global SQL environment.
Currently, I use Confio (Solar Winds) with pretty solid success. I've tested SQL Sentry (w/out much success (underlying data not clean, doesn't match PerfMon or SQL DMV's, highest CPU consumers not accurate, Process heavy (consumes 3% CPU)).
I've done a POC with RedGate and Idera - but I'm looking for a more top CPU consumption view not a basic holistic view of the entire system.
So - is anyone leveraging System Center Operations Manager for SQL Server? Wondering how it performs compared to Confio/RedGate, Idera, etc...
Any information is appreciated.
Thanks.
I find your results pretty abnormal. I haven't seen SQL Sentry consume that much cpu - in any of our client installations. Compare that to SCOM at about 15-20% or Idera at about the same level from what we have seen historically.
I also haven't seen the mismatch you are seeing between DMVs and SQL Sentry. I am curious what you are doing in your test bed to arrive at these conclusions. I don't work for SQL Sentry but do trust that it is a highly accurate and reliable monitoring piece of software. Redgate SQL monitor is also very good - but different. In the same vein, Solarwinds (Confio) Ignite is a totally different beast. It is the best tool on the market for monitoring waits and for waits analysis.
Ranking the tools you mentioned, I would place them in this order:
Ignite
SQL Sentry
Redgate
SCOM
Idera
But if you are just looking for a top sql consumer type of tool, you already have the dmos at your disposal. Why not roll your own? Write a query that meets your needs, create a report for the visualization and consumption of the query and deploy that.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
_______________________________________________
I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
SQL RNNR
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December 3, 2015 at 8:41 am
I second Jason's comment. I have extensively used both Confio and Sentry, never found any ambiguous data. I think these are leaders in SQL performance monitoring tool.
Confio - Awesome tool if you have lot of little transactions ( transactions less than 5 secs or so), give super in depth of every single process. Biggest benefit is they have a fully functional web UI, makes life so much easy :). Doesn't have enough reporting or alerting capability. Excellent customer support.
Sentry - Very good tool for trending, helps quickly to identify bottlenecks. Queries can be easily co-related with HW. Much cheaper than Confio. Good alerting and reporting. There backend has more valuable data, as matter of fact i am in process of creating custom alerts and reports from the back end. I wish they had more deeper dive reports . Has thick client, resource intensive, could be frustrating if you have the client on VM with 2 cores 🙁 .
Idera, Spotlight,Red Gate - My experience with these wasn't that great. Spotlight i think completely lost its charm, hasn't really changed anything in past 5 years. Idera is good, doesn't give in depth data atleast the last time i checked.
SCOM - Is bascially perfmon scheduler, not ideal for monitoring sql queries.
If you want to explore more there are some options here[/url] , some might be worth a shot.
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