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RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:29:12 GMT

It's hard to draw a line. I've been told we were idiots because we quite often refused $$$ to do something. Left money on the table, but I think we drew a moral line that we could live with and pay the bills. It can be a nasty world.There are people, like Gartner, Consumer Reports, and they charge. I often see people not wanting to pay for their info, and wanting someone to "share" it with them.we've talked about a "software consumer reports", but never had the time, or money to see if enough people would actually pay $2-5 a month for info. At least without sharing it with their friends.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

James Horsley — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:22:53 GMT

[quote]I can say that we have had reviews done in the past that we submitted to vendors for comment, and we told that we would lose advertising if we did not remove some of the harsh comments.[/quote]Ouch - how unethical - obviously if you are living off advertising that can be difficult to deal with - I would have thought that offering them the chance to have included in the article their response and details of how they intend to address any identified shortcomings would have been the ethical way forward. It also opens another can of worms - should you be accepting adverts for products you know to be shoddy? A bit of an extreme analogy but should a financial site show adverts from load sharks - I think not - so where do you draw the line.[quote]Look at all the software you use, and then how many reviews there are. There aren't a lot.[/quote]I do agree that the more "enterprise" the application the less available the comparative reviews are - I think this is probably due to a mixture of: a. The audience for the reviews is much lower so it would not be as compelling to devote time to writing an article b. The software is much harder to review anyway c. The software is expensive so if it is not provided free for review it would be difficult to justify purchase for review d. The infrastructure required for and installation of these products can be quite majorThat said there are consultancies (Bloor, Gartner etc) that make money from reports on this sort of thing.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

rja.carnegie — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 10:14:54 GMT

Several of the interesting articles in SQLServerCentral.com are of the form "Here is the stored procedure / script / business process that I use to..." Some of them are less interesting because you've already got one of those or it isn't something that you do. But certainly there's enthusiasm for do-it-yourself solutions, at least for addressing individual issues. An overall system for adding value would need more of an organised effort, less of a hobbyist approach - which I think is still how some of us, I anyway, approach such tasks. Half for fun, to prove it can be done!To make some obvious points, ideally a SQL Server Central monitoring and maintenance toolkit should have versions for different SQL Server products, versions, and configurations (we just stepped up to SQL Server 2005), should be as straightforward to use as possible, with plenty of documentation and comments, integration into Management Studio or for diehards Enterprise Manager would be nice (elementary example, you may be shocked: I had separate "external tool" entries added in EM just to "ping" (TCP/IP) each of our remote-sited servers to verify we could even talk to them, but I didn't need that [i]every[/i] day), and also on my wish list is that tools should deal well with an overstressed server. You know when a rogue process or lock or conflict means that EM or SSMS can't even display information about possible rogue processes or locks or conflicts? A good tool doesn't go dark on you in that situation. Maybe I should publish some of my own scripts... but you probably have good ones already.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:55:52 GMT

Most of the software reviews I've seen are very light. They don't seem to do the same job that a Consumer Reports does. There are exceptions, but they tend to be careful about what complaints they have. There is definitely pressure from advertisers if a piece comes out that beats on software too hard.I can't provide you specific examples, but I can say that we have had reviews done in the past that we submitted to vendors for comment, and we told that we would lose advertising if we did not remove some of the harsh comments.What you also don't always see is that some companies will not submit their products for review if they suspect a bad review is coming. Look at all the software you use, and then how many reviews there are. There aren't a lot. The IE v Firefox ones, Word v google Apps don't count.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Rudy Panigas — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:09:15 GMT

Earlier in this forum several people mentioned creating an open source tool for monitoring. I'm wondering if members would actually be interested in doing this. I for one would love to a part of a project like this. It would also be interesting to see what functions DBAs would like to see in an open source toolComments?Rudy

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

rja.carnegie — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:43:55 GMT

Is there still a licence condition on Microsoft SQL Server that you need Microsoft's approval to publish product benchmarks? I suppose that could affect open discussion of third party tools as well.For that matter, in any conversation here where one of us says, "I ran the query like this and like that, here are the times taken each way", we could be breaching the licence just there. Or even saying "User-defined functions are pretty lame." Note I put that in quotes, I did not say it (I like 'em!)

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

James Horsley — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:15:22 GMT

[quote]Most magazines that accept advertising don't do head to head comparisons because it's bad for business.[/quote]Can you really substantiate that - because almost all the computer orientated magazines I read:1. Take advertising2. Do comparative reviewsIndeed most have their monthly comparative review as their headline article.Which magazines were your thinking of that don't do this ?

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:33:09 GMT

Most magazines that accept advertising don't do head to head comparisons because it's bad for business. We tried to do that years ago and it was a mess.Consumer Reports, and a few other magazines that will go head to head, often don't rely so heavily on advertising, so they can make things work better.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

jts_2003 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:57:07 GMT

Hi Carla, I think you've summed it up perfectly :-)

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Carla Wilson-484785 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:07:43 GMT

1) I think it's really important to understand the basics, so writing one's own tools is excellent for that. That said, there are plenty of people who are far more knowledgeable about monitoring the servers than I, which is a good reason to take advantage of some third-party tools.2) What I would like to see is a comprehensive comparison of some of the commmon tools available. I am reminded of the product reviews I see in magazines, like PC Magazine or even Popular Photography, where a set of experts in the field do comprehensive tests of common products and list the pros and cons. Then the consumer can easily determine which product fits their particular needs. Of course, those people are getting paid to be the experts, but the key is that this panel reviews all the products, so they offer some consistency in evaluating them.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

jberg-604007 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:19:59 GMT

dead nuts on! gui tools are great only if you understand where the data is coming from and the limitations of the data. I know many developers who can use the gui tool from work but are lost when they don't have the tools available. I know others who can figure out how to get the data when they don't have the gui tool. I consider the last group to be the senior developers.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

jcrawf02 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:30:25 GMT

[quote][b]chrisn (9/14/2009)[/b][hr]Working for a development house, we understand that our clients may not have all the tools of our choice, and that we need to be able to understand what is going on with SQL Server given the native utilities. If you don't understand the anatomy, it's hard to prescribe the cure. [/quote]No it's not, send 'em for an MRI. Oh, wait, wrong debate, sorry....:-P

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Grant Fritchey — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:56:45 GMT

[quote][b]GSquared (9/15/2009)[/b][hr]I worked out the ROI and cost-of-implementation for buying monitoring software vs building it ourselves. Buying would, long-term, cost less, and short-term, be in place immediately, while building would take much longer (lots of wheels to re-invent) and cost more (even if we just count salary for those involved in building it), but has no immediate "today cost". They decided to insist on building it. For a company that exists to manage money, this place has a huge tendency towards "penny wise, dollar foolish".[/quote]Absolutely. We had been working in house on a monitoring solution for a piece of our monitoring and it had been under development for a year and still didn't work right on one server, let alone on 10 or the 30 we needed it for. I finally found a resource that did about 85% of what we wanted. The cost wasn't too high (although it was high enough) but I installed it and had it monitoring all our production servers within a couple of hours. As you say, measure the cost, not just in time spent developing, but in immediate use of the tool and all the benefits you get and compare that to not having the tool. It frequently makes the decision easier.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

jts_2003 — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:31:36 GMT

As someone relatively new to the World of the SQL DBA, I'd be only too glad to hear what third party products others are using to help monitor their servers and databases. Being new it's not even easy to know what to monitor, let alone work out which system tables and DMVs to use to do so :-)

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Rudy Panigas — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:11:22 GMT

After reading some of the comments I just have to ask a question.How much is your database environment worth? Sure you can "roll your own", I've created / use it with our 3rd party monitoring software and we have over 100 server. Yes it's not cheap to buy but neither is our data and / or our environment. If we have a problem with our data ware house, for example, then the dollars lost would have paid for the monitoring license. Open source SQL monitoring project, great count me in but I still believe that you can have both. Use your 3rd party tool for what it does best and use "rolled" code for things it doesn't.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

GSquared — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:02:58 GMT

I worked out the ROI and cost-of-implementation for buying monitoring software vs building it ourselves. Buying would, long-term, cost less, and short-term, be in place immediately, while building would take much longer (lots of wheels to re-invent) and cost more (even if we just count salary for those involved in building it), but has no immediate "today cost". They decided to insist on building it. For a company that exists to manage money, this place has a huge tendency towards "penny wise, dollar foolish".

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

ALZDBA — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:22:02 GMT

I depends ;-)$$$ caused me to have to build my own inventory solution, providing simple history information for instance settings, databases, tables, indexes and volumes.And a good lesson it has been. Learning and detecting where and how DMO and SMO can help out in a performant way ... or not.For the great solutions that are available on the market, $$$ and licensing types are the big setback issues.Another huge problem is the add-ons to as well your target server(s) as well as your user databases.Especially if you want to remove the product afterward, in many cases leaving unused stuff on the os or in your db.One of the "problems" with many state of the art packaged solutions, is generalisation. There seems to be no simple way of defining high priority servers vs low priority using e.g. profiles and exception rules.This would come to studying your products xml config, ... in detail or accepting the vast amount of alerts being generated and overlooking the single one you needed.And yes, in many cases, the HW you would need to collect and process your needed data would be way to expensive (on top of the product ! ) to get your total projects budget approved, because for the product, you can start small and buy extra licenses when needed, but your infrastructure must be in place as of day 1 !In many cases, there is a different product to do your firefighting vs doing your evolution analysis. No problem with that, but many times, these products aren't using the same set of data or can't even share the provided data. Accountants that manage your purse, aren't interested in the great stuff you see when evaluating a product.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

rja.carnegie — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:36:00 GMT

[quote][b]James Horsley (9/15/2009)[/b][hr]It seems to me we have a forum here with lots of people rolling their own solutions - surely this would be an ideal open source project to harness that work into a collaborative alternative to the big money solutions that so many cannot afford or justify[/quote]I too would like to suggest that some other folks should produce a free open-source tool for server management ;-)And I know what it'll look like if they do.On the other hand:(1) How much commercial software in this category is really useful, and how much falls into "executive toy" class? That is, it lets you brag over the colleague or competitor who doesn't have CIO Dashboard Xtreme for Microsof SQL Serverz, and you can lean back in your chair and watch LED-styled indicators run up and down and on and off l!all day, but it doesn't serve a purpose (and maybe neither do you)?(2) Even if it is useful, is it value for money, or is it expensive because SQL Server is expensive?For comparison, look at the price of "apps" for iPhone, or for Palm computers, alongside similar programs for desktop Windows - say a diet calculator/log or a game of checkers - sold are "shareware". The desktop product may represent only a similar amount of creative effort but the price ticket is probably a multiple of the handheld-device edition. The executable file is also probably many times larger. Well, the server is a step up in price again.On the other hand, would your boss authorise paying $20 for software to manage 100 SQL Servers? Or would it look suspicious? Better to charge $200 PER server, then the customer feels they got their money's worth.Oh, there's also the question of who's liable if an open-source product actually interferes with your servers. Or if you feel like claiming that it did. I am mentally speculating how much of the price tag on SQL Compare is the vendor's liability insurance. You can speculate too if you like.Maybe that isn't insuperable. For instance, we're proposing an open source tool. How about something that takes the form of merely generating a tailor-made Transact-SQL script that produces a health report on your servers, but technically you use the script at your own risk and are responsible for understanding what it does?

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

yves.walter — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:10:40 GMT

Of course your are right. But as a DBA you also should understand how Software development and Applications are working with Databases.So from my point of view a DBA should also develop a small application and maintain it if possible.A good example is a monitoring tool.I our company we have been developing such a tool with a central Repository (SQL Server database). This repository consolidates infos from our SQL Instances, databases, databases files etc...I' m still working on it but not all the time.When I' am dealing with our development team, i can be more concrete.Yves WalterDBA from a Insurance company in Switzerland.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

James Horsley — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:05:40 GMT

It seems to me we have a forum here with lots of people rolling their own solutions - surely this would be an ideal open source project to harness that work into a collaborative alternative to the big money solutions that so many cannot afford or justify

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

SQL_EXPAT — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:41:32 GMT

IMO the single biggest reason why enterprises do not go down the 3rd party SQL monitoring software route is cost. Some of these performance monitoring tools are close to $1000 a server. When you have 100s of servers the incentive to build your own is high. Large enterprises already have a global monitoring solution so any additonal monitoring tools need to be motivated for and also have to intergrate seemlessly with the enterprise monitoring solution.Any DBA worth his salt needs to be able to collect and analyse peformance data using native tools.Having said that I would always welcome articles, sessions and reviews on monitoring products provided that the licensing and ongoing support costs are clearly listed in the article as well as associated infrastructure costs in implementing the software.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

cmille19 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:32:06 GMT

I would agree on the buy decision and I've often wondered why anyone would build their own monitoring system. And if I couldn't buy a solution I would look at several free or low cost monitoring tools before rolling my own.I've seen Ops Mgr (SCOM) 2007 presentations at the SQL PASS Summit even though Ops Mgr isn't "free". So, perhaps as long as its a Microsoft monitoring products its OK :-)My local SQL user group has a no vendor product demo policy. Some of our user group attendees are from small shops that lack any tool funding and feel, rightly so, the product demos are of little value to them. I on the other hand, find the product demos useful, but I guess that's what vendor exhibit halls are for.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

chris leslie-412714 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:26:46 GMT

I find it depends on the enviroment and how large/varied it is on if i would want to use 3rd party tools. I have tested numerous tools out where i work and have yet to find one that is better then rolling my own solution. I think if i was in a smaller enviroment it would be easier to rely on a 3rd party solution but we have a large number of SQL servers on many different versions so it makes it hard to gather all relavant info across 1000+ servers. Also I have found that every 3rd party tool has its pro's and con's and i don't think there could be an overall winner unless it is for a specific task. Maybe something that compared these different tools against each other on a task by task basis and also included a couple ways to do it with default MS tools would be the way to go.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Tim Shay — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:18:06 GMT

I'm on board with Marcus... cost is a major, major factor. It's hard enough to sell a few hundred bucks for a monitoring package - but then multiply that by the number of servers in your environment, and if you're in a medium-to-large shop, it just becomes prohibitive. In most cases, we're really not all that interested in the deeper stats... we just need something that gives us a heads-up on four or five key items.I'd love to find a relatively inexpensive SQL monitor (or a general-purpose monitor that we could write our own stats-post into) that we can buy once, and tie in to any number of servers. Or one that has a minimal cost variance depending on tiers of servers... 1-10, 11-50, 50-200, and 200+ - something like that. I could probably 'sell' $2000 for the 11-50 tier... but could never sell $30,000 just to get basic monitoring for 20 SQL Server Express boxes that we paid... $0 for. We could just as easily hire someone, and have a multi-purpose entry-level DBA trainee.I find myself in a loop, though - I need better monitoring than I have today, I could write something basic if I wanted to take time away from other projects, but the price tag on the out-of-the-box ones that are worth the expense just keeps us away. So I just keep dragging along with mediocre monitoring and reactive corrections, and start the loop all over...

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Grant Fritchey — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:40:51 GMT

[quote][b]Rudy Panigas (9/14/2009)[/b][hr]Build or Buy, good question. I believe that building is a great way to really learn a lot about SQL server and is great for small companies that are money tight. Even after saying that a 3rd party tool is the way to go. There are so many to pick from cheap to very expensive. What if members here post a document and/or video as how each of this products work or pick a specific task that the product does really well. Who cares which is the best, as long it helps you get to where you need to do/go/fix/troubleshoot/etc. After all isn't that what we are trying to do?Cheers,Rudy[/quote]I agree. I'm not interested in which one is "best" because, fact is, best for you is not going to be best for me or best for the next person. Not to mention you're only going to be able to say "best for price x" because I might sacrifice a bit of functionality to save tens of thousands of dollars.As you say, it's not which product is best, but if you're using Product Z, what's the best way to implement it? Are there gotchas to watch for, ways around them, etc. Those would make great presentations if there was a way to give them in an agnostic fashion.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Rudy Panigas — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:32:14 GMT

Build or Buy, good question. I believe that building is a great way to really learn a lot about SQL server and is great for small companies that are money tight. Even after saying that a 3rd party tool is the way to go. There are so many to pick from cheap to very expensive. What if members here post a document and/or video as how each of this products work or pick a specific task that the product does really well. Who cares which is the best, as long it helps you get to where you need to do/go/fix/troubleshoot/etc. After all isn't that what we are trying to do?Cheers,Rudy

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Marcus Hopfinger — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:29:52 GMT

I can't speak for all those at are looking at building rather than buying a system but here are the two main reasons that we are currently building a system after using a purchased product for 3 or 4 years.The cost per server for a purchased solution is a tough sell to managment, especially recently, however a backburner project is very low cost and can be used for all our current production, test and development servers plus any new server that are brought online without having to plea for funds for additional licenses. Not to mention with a home grown solution you don't have yearly "maintenance" fees.Some of the tools are a bit of a chore to configure and updating to a new version will start the configuration process all over again. With a home grown solution we can focus on the metrics that we are most concerned with and store the data in a repository that fits our corporate standards so we can more easily generate performance reports for the business units to show what we are doing to enhance their server performance or to justify repacing or updating hardware.Since all these comercial systems use SMO and WMI and the like to build there systems it isn't too much of a chore to tap into the same components to get the data we need. I have liked the system I have been using for several years but it isn't always everything I had hoped for and the licensing and fees are getting to be a tougher sell to managment every year.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

James Horsley — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:28:24 GMT

A comparison of a number of products could be very useful - but would also be pretty difficult to produce as by their nature these products really need to be installed and used in an enterprise environment to see their real potential (and weaknesses).Maybe more realistic would be an article about what features to look for in such tools - and have this a a fluid document for a bit so that it can be enhanced with other requirements etc from comments in these forums - the various vendors could then be encouraged to provide their response to how their tools match the collaboratively acquired list of features - and as their responses would be "branded" there is no problem with the content looking like a masquerading advert

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

chrisn-585491 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:10:32 GMT

Working for a development house, we understand that our clients may not have all the tools of our choice, and that we need to be able to understand what is going on with SQL Server given the native utilities. If you don't understand the anatomy, it's hard to prescribe the cure.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Grant Fritchey — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:05:12 GMT

[quote][b]Jack Corbett (9/14/2009)[/b][hr]We had short debate about this in planning for SQLSaturday #21 - Orlando. One of the sponsors wanted to have some time to do a demo of one of their products, beyond a table at the event. IMO, there is nothing wrong with an event providing that time, provided it is made clear that this is a vendor sponsored session and will be a bit a of a sales pitch. I know I would appreciate articles/sessions on a specific product. Comparisons articles are great, but you can't really be an expert on each of the products, so I'd just assume learn about why you chose the one you are using, how you are using it, and what are your favorite and least favorite features. I'd personally accept a session to an event that was something like, How [Insert Product Here] helped me do X, provided it was submitted by someone not employed by the vendor.[/quote]You would, and I would, but the big conferences and most of the smaller conferences, won't. And I think that's a pity. I can go to a session on how Tom LaRock uses Microsoft Operations Manager within his enterprise. But I can't go to one where MVP X uses Product Y within his enterprise, as a part of the show. It's only going to be at the booth or in a side program at lunch or something. I just don't like it. On the other hand, I don't want the conferences to turn into an extended sales pitch in every single session, and they could.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Jack Corbett — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:50:53 GMT

We had short debate about this in planning for SQLSaturday #21 - Orlando. One of the sponsors wanted to have some time to do a demo of one of their products, beyond a table at the event. IMO, there is nothing wrong with an event providing that time, provided it is made clear that this is a vendor sponsored session and will be a bit a of a sales pitch. I know I would appreciate articles/sessions on a specific product. Comparisons articles are great, but you can't really be an expert on each of the products, so I'd just assume learn about why you chose the one you are using, how you are using it, and what are your favorite and least favorite features. I'd personally accept a session to an event that was something like, How [Insert Product Here] helped me do X, provided it was submitted by someone not employed by the vendor.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

scott mcnitt — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:50:34 GMT

I am not an official DBA but a database developer that wears the DBA hat a lot in what I do. In my production support role, I needed help in being more proactive in monitoring and addressing issues in our database applications. I also wanted some of the expertise that can sometimes come “built-in” to these monitoring tools. So I pushed to buy a tool.Regardless of if the tool is one that I purchase or build myself, don’t I still have some work to do and decisions to make in how to use the tool or what the data actually means? It would be great to have guidance and recommended best practices, without necessarily having to deal with how I am getting the data.Perhaps even something as simple as the pro / con of deploying the tool on the same server that it is monitoring.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Grant Fritchey — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:40:59 GMT

[quote][b]David.Poole (9/14/2009)[/b][hr]If I am a fan of a tool then I have no qualms about pushing that tool regardless of who produces it.There will always be people who complain about a reviewer "selling out" or being partisan. They are noisy but in the minority.Most readers will simply use a review to supplement (but not replace) their own research. There will always an element of personal preference. I personally like the Quest tools but find their UI a bit fiddly and counter-intuitive, someone else may disagree on either or both points. If the reviewer sticks with the facts and keeps the emotives to the minimum then what is the problem?[/quote]I do agree, but see Steve's point. I have my preferred tools, and anyone who has been around me for a presentation or a chat could figure them out PDQ. But, I don't want to be associated with any one company because I recognize good in almost all the companies whose tools I've worked with or evaluated. It's just way to easy to be associated with only one organization (although, I freely admit to being pretty much a shill for Microsoft, can't help that one).

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Grant Fritchey — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:38:07 GMT

[quote][b]giaks0wn (9/14/2009)[/b][hr]Reminds me of a corporate finance class with the instructor determined to make sure you could recite the formulas. Sure, everyone knew which calculator button to push and in the order necessary to get the answer, but he was determined we should know the behind the keypad process in case we needed to calculate in a moment the return value or PI. Does the same theory apply here? If you work in consultancy, could you enter any company, without your favorite monitoring app, and tell them if "everythings OK"? Discuss the benefits of third party solutions, but ceasing to teach and reinforce the fundamentals would be a grave loss.[/quote]That's an excellent point. It really is important that people understand the fundamentals, whether they use a tool or not. But it's especially important if they use a tool that understand what it's doing, what it can do, why, what it can't do, why, and where it derives the information it presents. This makes you into an adminstrator of the tool, not simply a user. Great point.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

David.Poole — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:01:42 GMT

If I am a fan of a tool then I have no qualms about pushing that tool regardless of who produces it.There will always be people who complain about a reviewer "selling out" or being partisan. They are noisy but in the minority.Most readers will simply use a review to supplement (but not replace) their own research. There will always an element of personal preference. I personally like the Quest tools but find their UI a bit fiddly and counter-intuitive, someone else may disagree on either or both points. If the reviewer sticks with the facts and keeps the emotives to the minimum then what is the problem?

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

giaks0wn — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:58:22 GMT

Reminds me of a corporate finance class with the instructor determined to make sure you could recite the formulas. Sure, everyone knew which calculator button to push and in the order necessary to get the answer, but he was determined we should know the behind the keypad process in case we needed to calculate in a moment the return value or PI. Does the same theory apply here? If you work in consultancy, could you enter any company, without your favorite monitoring app, and tell them if "everythings OK"? Discuss the benefits of third party solutions, but ceasing to teach and reinforce the fundamentals would be a grave loss.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

Steve Jones - SSC Editor — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:01:26 GMT

We've tried to figure out how to do this well here for years, but never came up with a good way. Plus we were bound by advertising contracts, which could have influenced us.I think part of the issue is that many people don't want to push a particular product since people will assume they are being compensated somehow. Lots of MVPs fight this image, despite all the complaints they publicly make about Microsoft products.

RE: Don't Build a Monitoring System

SQLNightOwl — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:37:22 GMT

Sounds like a good plan. Do a tool comparison but don't select a "winner" because that's a matter of preference. Then drill in with a how to on each one.

Don't Build a Monitoring System

Grant Fritchey — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:30:40 GMT

Comments posted to this topic are about the item [B]Don't Build a Monitoring System[/B]