Microsoft SQL Server Monitoring Options

ericmcd

I've been working with our SQL DBA's to work out whether we can and should use SolarWinds for SQL Server monitoring. SAM does provide a SQL monitoring templates and AppInsight for SQL, however these don't seem to provide the functionality that a specialised tool like RedGate SQL Monitor does (for example: https://monitor.red-gate.com/GlobalDashboard#Critical=false&Warning=false&Healthy=false&Group=&BM=&HistoryGroup=&HistoryTimespan=1440)

So I'm looking for advice from anyone who has looked at whether SolarWinds is a good tool for SQL Monitoring. There's a number of issues:

(1) There's limited ability to configure AppInsight for SQL (I've discussed this with support) 

(2) I can see a way to create a usable dashboard like those in SQL Monitor link above. AppFabric doesn't really offer anything useful

(3) SolarWinds doesn't appear to support modern SQL authentication but required a password stored in credentials

(4) If I want to give our DBAs the ability to set-up and configure their own application monitors it looks like this gives them edit permission across all SAM monitors.

 

Some things are relatively straightforward such as monitoring services and processes, but beyond that it feels like more specialist tools would do a better job (e.g. SQL Agent Job Failures, SQL error logs deadlock and stack dump, indexes with more than 100 pages and > 30% fragmentation). Yes, we could purchase the Database Performance Analyser module, but this is for monitoring performance rather than monitoring errors and alerts on the underlying SQL servers.

 

Seashore

Hi 

I would say that you can do most of the things you and your dba wants with SAM. For example you can run queries against SQL to get almost any information, you just have to form the answer into a single integer. 

ex. how many databases has NOT been backed up last 24 hours, or how many SQL jobs with the name "Important *" has failed last 12 hours. 

With that you can get all info you want. A lot of info that you can't get with other more locked down tools.

AppInsight for SQL is a good start. Some values I tend to remove the thresholds from. Some I alert on but not all. Using both AppInsight and my special queries I think I get a good overview of SQL. 

I use DPA as well and think it is a wonderful tool to use - on instances where you have code you control running. The biggest benefit is seeing what code and queries is misbehaving. With DPA you can easily spot them and correct them. 

Hope that helps some.

/Thomas, Orion Specialist and MS SQL DBA