Competition: What’s your favorite SQL Monitor feature?

Roseanna

Hello everyone, 

Enter our competition to win a Pluralsight subscription and Redgate goodies.

To say thank you for all your support, we’re giving you the chance to win a 3-month subscription to Pluralsight and Redgate goodies including a SQL Monitor t-shirt and SQL Server Execution Plans, Third Edition by Grant Fritchey. 

To enter our prize draw, please answer this question in the thread below: ‘What’s your favorite SQL Monitor feature and why?’

The competition closes on 20 March and the winner will be randomly selected from the entries received.

Good luck!

Roseanna

*Pluralsight provides web development, IT certification and online training that helps you move forward with the right technology and the right skills. 

rajkumar

SQL Change Automation is d best! It Rocks creating Migrations and Deployment Scripts

Roseanna

Hi @rajkumar, it's fantastic to hear that SQL Change Automation rocks creating migrations and deployment scripts! Do you use SQL Monitor too? If so, do you have a favorite feature? 

rajkumar

Blocking Process is one of the coolest feature! It always corrects me that i didn't hit into pitfall

Roseanna

rajkumar said:

Blocking Process is one of the coolest feature! It always corrects me that i didn't hit into pitfall

That's awesome. Really pleased to hear that the blocking process alert is so useful. Good luck with the prize draw and have a lovely day  

clivestrong

So many features to choose from, but I am going to opt for custom metrics.  The reason for this is to enable a consistent alerting platform.  It also allows us to use pre-defined pagerduty alert mechanisms with no extra effort at all.  Where possible, we'll use SQL Monitor custom metrics over jobs configured in SQL Agent.

BlueGateDave

My fave is the alerting.  We use both email and slack for various alerts.

dev26v8

You can quickly see how your server is performing and which queries are taking the longest. My favourite is the Intelligent alerting & performance dashboard because it provides a quick dashboard to identify what servers have issues, and the priority of them. 

GDodd

Heaps of features make my life easier: Disk usage projections, Custom Metrics to monitor your own applications, emails reports so you can show management trends over time, the Server Overview page (the whole page is awesome, especially the top 10 waits), but the biggest thing has to be Alerts. When monitoring the DB isn't your only job, getting alerted when things go wrong is essential - it lets you get on top of an issue quickly, resolving it (hopefully) before the business even notices. It takes a while to set all of the levels to what your systems need so you just get the alerts that matter, but it's worth the investment.

matthanson

Gotta love the dashboard. It just sits there all day where it can be glanced at. All green = all good! (I do wish it had a large format / TV mode though.)

Sidneylc

The feature I like most is alerts so I get notified to when something is wrong. But I will also say the reports because I can share it easily and I don't have to check queries or events for myself to present them.

MarkoEncinapy

We are using SQL Monitor

the most interesting are: main dashboard, as well as Tempdb monitoring, Blocking processes, Availability groups and the databse view.

nreynard

Tempdb session & version store give a quick & precise indication of [where to start] when monitoring an instance for me - they are really useful, thanks!

Ayman_Elnory

Blocking process, then deadlocks.

I am totally depending on redgate on that, the best detailed email i get ever for these 2 issues

deboraht007

I love the API - we've been able to use it in some automation.

Roseanna

Thank you for all your entries so far. It's been fantastic to learn about your favorite features  

Looking forward to receiving more entries. The competition closes on 20 March, so you've got a while yet to submit your favorite SQL Monitor feature for the chance of winning a Pluralsight subscription and Redgate goodies.

angelos

For us it's AG latency monitoring. 
Being a financial company we need to have split second synching between HQ and DR so AG latency monitoring is crucial

Chancer

We find the Global Overview the most useful, it gives us the status of all our servers at a glance.  We can then drill down to investigate any issues.  That along with the alerting features available we are always on top of any potential problems

eliassal

TempDB and Blocking process monitoring as well as main perfmon figures

VBJV

I love the ability to customize the alert levels.  This allows me to get pestered by emails from the issues that really matter (as defined by the team).  That way there aren't too many alerts that consequently get ignored.

dyard

I have been using SQL monitor for years. I have loved this tool from the beginning but since the last updates to the Dashboard\Overview and others. Redgate has stepped up their game in the market. Favorites for me would be the deadlock graph much easier than doing this in SSMS all the tabs are there for alert history to occurrences. Another favorite is the Analysis Graph this really helps us plug in the time line to get that historical information on just about everything you can think of. Moving right along to the reports to create custom reports to send out weekly or what ever time frame you like. This helps us stay proactive on the areas we have identified has hot spots we need to work on. Last the new estate tab this one is great easily to identify what needs patched and the disk usage needs. I cant really say I have a favorite overall I love all the features in this tool and will continue to use this for years to come. Thanks Redgate

jholck

Alert Suppression Windows and being able to build automation around it. We perform our monthly server patching process in 3 phases (environment-based). We are able to use our enterprise job schedule to find all the systems in our "TEST" group, and add a suppression window. We are then able to use the same type of automation to remove the suppression window when the work is completed. We do this also for our STAGE and PRODUCTION environments. Reduces noise and manual work!

mschmelzer1

The analysis graphs are quick and easy to use to dive into trends.  A couple clicks and you have a great view of the metrics you were looking for. 

knja

Top queries and waits because of full query details and automatic updates. Best monitoring tool. 

joey321

Blocking and Deadlock alerting is very important as it might signify problems with memory, IO latency, stressed CPU, bad code, missing indices and other problems.

deepaklal

My Best features of SQL Monitor are

1. SQL Server monitoring and alerting tool, designed to allow Ops teams to supervise many SQL Server instances across different networks.

2.It allows you to add Users,Manage Monitored Servers,Configuring Alerts & Alerts  Notifications,Respond to Alert Notifications, Analyse Metrics with a  Global Dashboard.

3. Estate pages help DBAs monitor and safeguard the security, stability and availability of their servers.

4. SQL Monitor allows you to create,configure,schedule,email and download reports. 

Wanting to win the Pluralsight subscription and Redgate goodies.

  

dalib

Finding inactive SQL server databases is an excellent feature, because it helps to keep memory clean and help monitor database activity, gives you idea at a high abstraction level about all databases in use and others that aren't.

sredmond

My favourite feature is the baseline. That I can easily see how a particular metric was over, say the last week or month, is very useful. I don’t use it often but when I do want it, it is a lifesaver.

The feature that I am most thankful for and that I use most often is the Overviews screen. We have 27 production instances and being able to see them at all at a glance is wonderful. We have a big screen mounted in our office with the Overview screen displayed on it. I can use it to show PMs, people from Helpdesk whether an instance is under more load than usual this morning, I can respond reasonably quickly to a deadlock, failed job or some other event that requires my attention. I notice from the movement or colour change that something has happened.

And during home-office, it occupies my second screen.

BrunoPimenta

Hi there,
For me the best feature is the 'Latest Alerts' side panel. It lets me know a fast overview on how the system is performing and allows a rapid (less clicks) to get to any issues.

Camromere

I like the dashboard for a quick view of issues on any SQL Server, but the Custom Metrics are a plus too!

TonyR

SQL Monitor has to be #1 - it's got us out of sooo many difficult situations its like having an engineer on call 24/7