Control SQL Server User Experience Monitor auth method

taters

SAM 2020.2.6 added Fetching Method Skip Fallback to disable specific fallback methods for component monitors. This is great!

• https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/sam/content/release_notes/sam_2020-2-6_release_notes.htm: Fetching Method Skip Fallback: For many component monitors, you can already set the default method to collect data according to your needs. Now you can save time and reduce polling by disabling specific fallback methods for component monitors also. If the selected protocol fails, no fallback occurs. This new option is also available for Performance Counter Monitors.
• https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/sam/content/sam-component-monitor-skip-fallback.htm

This would be handy for SQL user experience monitors as well. Right now, you give each one a credential to use, and it will try to use the credential as both a Windows account and a SQL account. Apparently this is by design. The problem is that this generates a lot of SQL login failures. This creates extra noise in our SQL error logs and extra work for us to validate the cause of these errors.

• https://support.solarwinds.com/SuccessCenter/s/article/Logon-errors-in-SQL-Logs-on-a-monitored-SQL-server
• The reason for the errors is SAM will attempt log into the SQL server via both Windows credentials and SQL credentials.  This is by design and will cause a login failure for the version of authentication that it is not using.
• SQL error: Login failed for user 'domain\account'. Reason: Attempting to use an NT account name with SQL Server Authentication. [CLIENT: X.X.X.X]

If we could tell the components to only use the authentication method we want, that would cut down on unnecessary errors. This would be one less thing for the SQL DBAs and support team to worry about.

taters

It doesn't look like I can edit this now, but I tracked down the issue to one component where the "Use Windows Authentication first,
then SQL authentication" checkbox was unchecked. I didn't have a good way to track this down short of opening every application template.