I appreciate the detailed reply, Marios. You certainly seem to understand the position I am in - looking at SCOM with a view to using it for some useful SQL monitoring and thinking,

"What the #$@^!???" etc...

SCOM 2007 seems like a beast... but from what you are saying -- and your article backs this up -- it is a beast that can be tamed, if approached with the right attitude.

I too have used Idera and SQL Sentry plus a number of other tools, which tend to have nice GUIs, but I have often resorted to writing my own scripts for monitoring. And yes, trying to deploy scripts to multiple database servers is a complete pain - especially when every deployment seems to require some kind of customization... so perhaps, as you are saying, the pain of the SCOM 2007 learning curve is worth it for the ability to centrally monitor multiple database servers...

Again thanks for the follow up - I have a better feel for what I am facing now and, perhaps more importantly, appreciate why I should bother... 🙂