Can I monitor SQL instances, but not Host Machine?

gazoo

Hi,

I am testing out Redgate SQL Monitor and it's great so far but we have some concerns over the admin rights and monitoring of the host machine.

Is there a way to monitor the SQL Instances without getting admin privileges to the host? We have other tools for that, don't need this tool to do anything on that front.

I assume this should be doable since the tool claims to support Amazon RDS monitoring, which obviously will not have access to the host instance.

I looked here https://documentation.red-gate.com/disp ... ermissions but as per my colleague there is no way to to use this monitor without providing OS administration privileges.

Can someone advise?

Alex B

Hi Gazoo,

There is no way around needing permissions to the host machine - this connection is required to be able to monitor at all. We have had some customers who were able to figure out the specific permissions needed in their environment for the data collections and so were able to not give administrator privileges but we still require admin privilege as the collections may be changed during development.

May I ask where you've seen that we support Amazon RDS? I know we specifically do not support this for the exact reason you've stated and I can't see anywhere in our documentation or on the product page that indicate we support RDS or the Azure equivalent "database/SQL instance in the cloud".

The only possible thing is that it *may* be possible to host the redgatemonitor data repository database into one of these, but it seems one would need to create the database there in the first place since if SQL Monitor is left to create it, the installer needs access to the model database which is not allowed it seems. I've not installed to RDS, but the previous is the only reference to something that would not be available in the circumstance that I've found - but again we don't specify that we support this in our documentation it just "might work".

Kind regards,
Alex

gazoo

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your response.

My company is looking closely at installing Redgate and we have already reached out to your sales, but the requirement on Administrator may be a dealbreaker for us. We don't mind having to figure out issues in future releases related to permissions, but is there a list (even if it is unofficial -- posted by one of these customers) where I know which permissions in particular are required?

As for RDS/Azure, I may have been mixing it up with some of your other SQL tools, I will keep note of that, it is not a requirement for us at this time but may become so in the future.

Thanks again!

Alex B

Hi gazoo,

The permissions are those required to have the data collection tests succeed from the base monitor to the remote machine. This page goes over the collection tests (WMI, Remote Regstry, Remote Registry(Perfmon), SQL, File access, Ping). One thing to note is that the file access is for accessing the ERRORLOG, and while this falls under the SQL Server level if there is a failure, the windows level user is actually used. As stated in the documentation on permissions, the user also needs to be able to log in locally to the Base Monitor machine to authenticate.

So if you have a user that passes all of the tests above it should work.

Kind regards,
Alex