At the last three jobs I have had as a DBA I have set up “Dashboards”. The first was an ASP page that connected to each data server and executed code to monitor failed jobs, files and disk sizes and reported on other database statistics. The last two places I have used reporting services. In my current position I have set up a reporting services dashboard that has a color coded list of each production data server’s health. We have approximately 40 production databases spread over 10 servers.

Each server name links to another report the directly runs dynamic queries of the master and msdb tables to report on failed jobs, lists of disk drives and space used, server up time, version info and each database. The databases listed shows logical names, segments, size, space used, and growth type. I also run a monthly job that runs a defrag analysis and chkdsk with output to a text file that I import into a table.

When a job has failed it sends an e-mail to the IT department. The dashboard will list the failed job and links to a “run sheet” that lists: job name, level, contact, re-run instructions, location of scripts, output files, and links to log files. Anyone in the IT department can go to the reporting services report and see the health of the entire production database system and quickly identify anything that might need immediate escalation.