SqlServer monitoring - DBA toolkits

  • After having been in the Oracle world for the past four years, I'm just getting started with SqlServer and have a general question for the SqlServer DBA crowd: What toolkits, home written or vendor supplied, do you use as a general purpose monitoring suite?  The types of things that I'm talking span a variety of areas, but here are some examples.  Warnings when a .mdf is approaching a maximum size.  A simple script to poll all of your instances of SqlServer to at least verify they're connectable.  Flags if databases are built with defined standards (size limits, filegroups, memory limits, deleting builtin administrators, etc...)  I'm wondering how others manage this type of activity across dozens of servers and dozens of instances of Sqlserver?  PERL, VB, WMI, shareware, vendor products? 

  • Generally the first thing I do for our SQL Server installations is setup the SQL Server Agent to forward all events to a central server/workstation. This gives you a single point for event log monitoring.

    We use a monitoring package called Servers Alive (http://www.woodstone.nu/salive/index.asp) from there I use a couple of ASP pages that log into the databases and execute queries to guarantee connectivity. The ASP pages and scripts can be found here (http://www.sqlserver.com.au/resources/)

    Also, if you can, setup a single SQL instance to be you're central repository. Then install the SQL Health and History Tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=EEDD10D6-75F7-4763-86DE-D2347B8B5F89&displaylang=en). This tool gathers quite a lot of information about SQL Server. Make sure you also download the Performance Collector and the reports. The add-on performance collector also collects data from Performance monitor counters. If you have SQL Reporting Services installed the reports give you a instant method of viewing all the data that's being collected.

     

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    Colt 45 - the original point and click interface

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