February 12, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Is there a tool that can be used as a central management tool for monitoring sql servers, we have 100 sql instances in our enviroment?
Thanks
February 12, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Busy tonight Anna? 🙂
Monitoring for what? Performance? Errors? Threshold Breaches? Job failures, Backup failures?
100+ servers is enterprise level so for everything except performance I would go for microsofts own offering here - SCOM.
for performance there are a number of suppliers, probably best to google this, but for starters companies include Redgate, Idera, Quest and a number of others I just cannot think of right now.
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February 12, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Yes, I have some time reading and studying today.:-P
while I'm reading, I find questions, thought this site is really a good one to get help.
Thank you
For monitor, I mean monitor disk space, cpu usage, ram usage, and etc, I guess this should use what you suggested SCOM, correct?
and for performance it's good to know those you suggested, I will look into it.
For backup failure or job status for many servers, what tool should we use instead to check one by one?
Thanks
February 13, 2011 at 12:06 am
Ignite is a good tool as well. Put out by Confio. Thomas LaRock has done a few live demos of it recently. I think he has one coming up in a few weeks that would allow you to ask a few questions and see the reporting and such.
But as George stated there are some good ones available. It basically boils down to what flavor or reporting you want and the price. Overall I have heard RedGate has the best priced tools available. (No I'm not saying that just because they run SSC either.)
Shawn Melton
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February 13, 2011 at 3:15 am
Anna_SQL (2/12/2011)
For backup failure or job status for many servers, what tool should we use instead to check one by one?
You should monitor these proactively by exception, by which I mean don't check that they have all succeeded, but set up alerts so you are informed when they fail. You can write your own scripts for this, and there is probably some on this site, but SCOM (system Centre Operations Manager) is best for this in my opinion when you have a lot of servers, and you can plug your own scripts into it. In particular you would need a script to tell you if a backup had even happened as well as just failed.
As I said SCOM is an enterprise level tool, so it is expensive and you need people to administer it, but it can be used to monitor at the server level as well, not just SQL, and probably covers other big MS offerings like Exchange. Your company might even already have it.
It will track server performance over time for you, basically by recording perfmon counters, but does not go down to query performance level, so IMHO you still need other tools here, or leverage the native options like SQL profiler and the DMVs.
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February 13, 2011 at 8:05 am
There are a lot of products out there that will do this. I've used four with varying degrees of success: SCOM, Idera Diagnostic Manager, Confio Ignite, and Red Gate SQL Monitor. Full disclosure, Red Gate is my employer now, so I have a pretty heavy bias towards their products.
SCOM from MS is good, and certainly enterprise ready. You can get Management Packs that do most of what you're asking about right out of the box. But, you have to spend a lot of time tuning their monitors and the interface is, frankly, a pile of dung. It's also pretty hard to create custom monitors (I've written about that here on SSC[/url]). DM is a decent tool, it works well. Confio Ignite is pretty slick if the main thing you're after is performance monitoring. It's fantastic at showing you where things are slow, why they're slow, etc. The interface is very useful and you can get a lot of return right out of the box. I like it. It doesn't do some of the more traditional, this job failed, you have errors, style of monitoring as other tools, but it's still pretty good. SQL Monitor from Red Gate is very focused on the useability and reportability of issues on your systems. It offers the types of monitoring you get with the other tools (although not the performance stuff of Confio) but really concentrates on getting the important information right in your face as soon as possible. I think it's really good and getting better all the time.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
February 13, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Grant Fritchey (2/13/2011)
.SCOM from MS is good, and certainly enterprise ready. You can get Management Packs that do most of what you're asking about right out of the box. But, you have to spend a lot of time tuning their monitors and the interface is, frankly, a pile of dung.
I would agree with that and its the main reason I don't find it very good for performance stuff.
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February 14, 2011 at 5:07 am
george sibbald (2/13/2011)
Grant Fritchey (2/13/2011)
.SCOM from MS is good, and certainly enterprise ready. You can get Management Packs that do most of what you're asking about right out of the box. But, you have to spend a lot of time tuning their monitors and the interface is, frankly, a pile of dung.
I would agree with that and its the main reason I don't find it very good for performance stuff.
I think it depends on how you break down the performance data. If you're talking the information around invidivual statement executions, 100% agreement. It's awful. If you're talking all the other perfmon counters & gathering data from DMVs, it's good, especially when running against hundreds of servers.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
February 14, 2011 at 8:29 am
What do you mean by manage?? If you mean do things like SSMS does then I think DBArtisan from Embarcadero is a great tool. If you mean MONITOR then others have mentioned numerous products. Read up on them and do some evals. Each has plusses and minusses. One not mentioned on the high end is Quest.
Best,
Kevin G. Boles
SQL Server Consultant
SQL MVP 2007-2012
TheSQLGuru on googles mail service
February 14, 2011 at 8:37 am
Thank you everyone for the answers, it's so much helpful.
I will keep these in mind.
I love this forum! There are so many talented DBAs here.
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