InstantForum.NET v2.9.0SQLServerCentralhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/notifications@sqlservercentral.comThu, 20 Jun 2013 04:19:39 GMT20http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxIve used Spotlight Enterprise manger as well as Foglight both by questi 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 :-)Thu, 26 May 2011 09:02:16 GMTUnicornsRrealhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI 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.Thu, 06 Jan 2011 08:15:03 GMTTheSQLGuruhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxIf you are looking to monitor the SQL Agent, give SQL Agent Insight a try. You can find it at [u][url]http://www.brentec.ca[/url][/u]. It will give a good overall picture of job status' along with alerting via email if core metrics deviate from configured thresholds.Regards.Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:51:11 GMTSodtkehttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxYou 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[url=goo.gl/BMrQw]goo.gl/BMrQw[/url]Wed, 05 Jan 2011 02:52:45 GMTadi - doccolabs.comhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI'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.Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:45:47 GMTIndianrockhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI 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 .Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:08:12 GMTCedzhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxSystemCentreOperationsManagerfrom 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.Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:39:13 GMTgrahamchttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxIdera's SQL diagonistic manager has been good in the fields you are requesting.Regards,SushantThu, 16 Dec 2010 06:09:14 GMTSKYBVIhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxMy thanks to all of you for the great advice. Already looking actively at your recommendations! Best regards and Happy Holidays.Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:12:33 GMTbwielandhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxIf you are looking for a simple monitoring tool for your SQL Agent job systems with vibrant visuals, you can check out SQL Agent Insight @ [u][url]www.brentec.ca[/url][/u]. 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.Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:56:34 GMTSodtkehttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxAs far as monitoring goes - another good tool is [url=http://www.confio.com/]Confio Ignite[/url]. I did an eval of this tool and found it to be extremely helpful.Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:26:04 GMTSQLRNNRhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxbwieland said: I'm not certain our small organization (that is growing) has the same level of expertise as people like you. "Do you find any of these tools that provide remedial approaches to problems or is it 'every man for himself'?One helpful aspect of [url=http://www.logicmonitor.com/]LogicMonitor[/url] is that its alerts don't just tell you a host is down. It gives you suggestions for resolution.Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:16:59 GMTSbariehttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxVery quick question for you. Do you have any research on pro's / con's of both products. I was listening to the presentation yesterday and it was very helpful. It would seem for our organization, we are looking not only for monitoring, but potentially some level of remedial approaches when monitoring indicates a challenge. While most of the DBA's that attend SQL Server Central are adept, I'm not certain our small organization (that is growing) has the same level of expertise as people like you. The presenter did a very good job of framing the 'four areas' to watch. It would appear that there are multiple solutions that will help you 'watch' your DB's. Do you find any of these tools that provide remedial approaches to problems or is it 'every man for himself'. Thanks for the insight.Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:28:06 GMTbwielandhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxCan System Center Operations Manager be used for this type of monitoring?Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:55:21 GMTarussell_10http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxIt is my hope that the SQL Monitor Webinar on 12/14 can answer those questions....Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:08:13 GMTbwielandhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI'd prefer Idera's SQL Diagnostic Manager. Thank You,Best Regards,SQLBuddyTue, 12 Oct 2010 15:58:07 GMTsqlbuddy123http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI'll give it a look, thanks!Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:32:41 GMTduconhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxIf you don't have a lot of time to dedicate to monitoring, logicmonitor might help. It's pre-configured to monitor the critical metrics out of the box so you don't have to know what needs to be monitored or how to configure. [url] http://www.logicmonitor.com/ [/url]Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:09:48 GMTSbariehttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxA friend and former colleague of mine wrote a review of Quest and Idera's products, it is a few years old now and you find his review here[url]http://www.gre-sqlserver-solutions.com/MonitoringTools.html[/url] Personally, I have never used the Quest product but seen it demo'd at some conferences, it looked good from what I have seen. Idera's product I have used in production and found it very good.I have looked very briefly at Redgate's offering and from I have seen that could be quite useful too.Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:46:01 GMTGRE (Gethyn Ellis)http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI've used Diagnostic Manager and Spotlight and of the two, I definitely prefer Diagnostic Manager.Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:19:14 GMTPam Brisjarhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxBoth SQL Diagnostic Manager and Spotlight offer that functionality you are looking for. There might be some other tools, maybe from Red-gate that have simplified functionality for that.Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:19:21 GMTRichard M.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxSounds good, I'll take a look at those as well thanks. Regarding the other answers, I'm really looking at something dedicated to monitoring SQL, like a console from which I can easily check server statuses, have alerts setup etc. Basically I want to be able to log in the console and very quickly be able to get a picture of how those 5 or 10 servers are doing.I also checked since then and the redgate product is called SQL Response sorry.GregWed, 24 Feb 2010 12:02:44 GMTduconhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxWe decided to go with [url=http://www.idera.com/Products/SQL-Server/SQL-diagnostic-manager/]Idera's SQL Diagnostic Manager[/url]. It is pretty similar in functionality as [url=http://www.quest.com/spotlight-on-sql-server-enterprise/]Spotlight from Quest[/url]. It didn't require any module or service installed on the DB server, which was a requirement for us when we purchased it. I believe current version of Spotlight does not have anything installed either on the DB server. Both provide a wealth of information for monitoring and plenty of alerting possibilities. I guess it comes down to testing them and seeing which one is better for your company's needs....Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:58:54 GMTRichard M.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxI belive Redgates tool can do it.Idera can do it as well.Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:52:22 GMTSQLRNNRhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxDBArtisan,Rapid SQL,AquaStudio and several third party tools can be used to administer sql servers of all editions. I believe that TOAD, from Quest software, can be used to administer multiple version of SQL Server as well as other DBMS's. Try RedGate SQL ToolBelt, Idera SQL Diagnostics Manager.Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:39:36 GMTMANU-J.http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic872079-146-1.aspxHi there,I'm in the process of looking into implementing a monitoring solution for a few SQL instances we have (2005/2008). I was wondering if I could get some feedback regarding the ones that people are using and like the most. I know this place is redgate-friendly (I myself am a user of SQLCompare) but I'm wondering if there are other things people use. Otherwise, sql alert does look like a really good tool from what I've seen.Basically, I want to be able to monitor the servers, whether it be resources, disk space, job running status, etc. and have a notification system that can send out emails and log information on a regular basis. This would be used by our tech support staff to have an easy glance at our servers. Some of these are clusters, others are going to be using mirroring, so there's quite a mix of setups used.Any feedback regarding the tools you use and why, others that have been evaluated, deployment concerns etc. would be greatly appreciated :)Regards,GregWed, 24 Feb 2010 10:52:10 GMTducon