Community
- Command Central
- MVP Program
- Monthly Mission
- Blogs
- Groups
- Events
- Media Vault
Products
- Observability
- Network Management
- Application Management
- IT Security
- IT Service Management
- System Management
- Database Management
Content Exchange
- SolarWinds Platform
- Server & Application Monitor
- Database Performance Analyzer
- Server Configuration Monitor
- Network Performance Monitor
- Network Configuration Manager
- SQL Sentry
- Web Help Desk
Free Tools & Trials
Store

Too Many Alert Definitions?

I am curious what the danger of too many alert definitions is and how many is too many?

I realize that this can be very subjective since they are basically SQL queries that run against the DB on a scheduled basis and therefore the load can fluctuate based on how often they run as well as how complex the query is; however, I am looking for some general guidelines to understand how much of a load one can throw at the alerting engine before you begin to experience problems.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

KMSigma.SWI

I can't comment from a "SolarWinds" side, but I can tell you that at my previous company, we had several hundred of them and since they were all SELECT queries (until they are triggered), there was virtually no impact. Basically since the same query is run over and over again that information gets placed into the SQL Server's memory and is accessed from there.

Side note: This is assuming that a) your SQL Server is on a separate machine and b) you have sufficient memory and processor behind it.

byrona

Thanks for the feedback! We have plenty of CPU and memory and the SQL server is all on Solid State disks so there should be no issues there.

adatole

My experience is that - barring some mal-formed query that is killing your system - alert triggers are not the biggest load on the system.

We've got ~10,000 devices, ~350 alerts (most running every minute, some at a longer interval) and we've never seen an issue with THOSE queries getting in the way.

A good way to check is to jump into SQL Management Studio, connect to your DB, right-click the server/instance name (the top element on the sidebar) and choose "Activity Monitor". Then make sure your alert queries aren't consistently appearing in the "Recent Expensive Queries" list.

If you have SAM, you can use the AppInSight monitor for SQL to do that (and much MUCH more) over a long-term basis.

aLTeReGo

Agreed. Because of the nature of SQL it's certainly possible to create a very expensive trigger condition but those would typically need to be custom SQL. As Leon Adato suggested, you can use AppInsight for SQL built into SAM to see if the alert conditions are your most expensive queries. Alternatively for deeper analysis, you could also use something like Database Performance Analyzer.