Today I am starting a week-long series where I will be discussing various SQL Server Monitoring Tools. My primary aim is to help people with my consulting workshop Comprehensive Database Performance Health Check. While I help customers with their various SQL Server performance issues, I often see them struggling to monitor their SQL Server’s health. One of the primary discussions at the end of the consultation is about which tool is the best for their situation and how it can prevent them from encountering more trouble in the future. Today we will briefly talk about SQL Monitor (SM).
Performance and Estate
When organizations are small, the team put rock solid plans in place to monitor their servers. However, when servers, data, and the business grows, the development and management team become busy with multiple tasks and eventually don’t spend sufficient time developing their monitoring solution. This leads to poor response time to business-critical issues with the system, resulting in sub-optimized servers. Whenever I see a scenario like this, I am always keen to introduce SQL Monitor. It is one of my favorite monitoring tools and it alerts you to problems before they occur, and automatically provides the data you need to monitor your server estate proactively.
My Top 3 Favorites of SQL Monitor
There are many reasons for liking this tool, however, I would love to expand on 3 of the reasons I like it.
Reason 1: Overcome Bad Database Deployments
A bad deployment can be more dangerous than hundreds of bad queries. When I am working with my customers, I always start by checking their deployments. Just one incorrect setting or configuration can slow down your system big time. Incorrect settings often have a cumulative negative impact on your overall system. This tool is very efficient at finding issues with deployment. If you suddenly see unusual behavior after a deployment, you’ll know exactly where to start your investigations using this tool.
Reason 2: Efficient Diagnosis
Time is of the essence when things are falling apart and your customers want you to fix the slow running application, this where I really think SQL Monitor does an amazing job. The easy-to-use interface of Monitor shows you the status and key metrics for your entire SQL Server estate at a glance. SQL Monitor highlights any issues and sends alerts in case problems escalate without you noticing.
Reason 3: Estate Management
Along with the SQL Server, there are few important concepts which are very important for the monitoring of SQL Server. With this tool you can get an instant overview of your installed versions, disk usage, backups, and SQL Agent jobs across your estate. Every issue will be flagged for review with additional information to enable you to better investigate and resolve problems. This why I think it is a very unique feature for everyone who wants to monitor the SQL Server.
When SQL Monitor is Best For You?
If your organizations prefer to proactively invest time in potential SQL Server issues, I think this tool should be your top choice. There are five distinct stages of SQL Monitoring – Alerting, Diagnosis, Performance, Overview, and Reporting and this product is amazing in each of these steps.
Call to Action
SQL Monitor is an amazing tool to identify and solve SQL Server performance issues.
I strongly suggest you Try out SQL Monitor.
Please share your experience with SQL Monitor in the comments section.
Reference:Â Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)
