Author Archives: Brian.Harris

Pinch-punch…. First of the month.

By Brian.Harris | Published: February 1, 2010
Warning! This article contains no references to SQL Server…. Pinch punch, first of the month. And no returns! It’s February. Already?! Where did January go? And for that matter, what happened to Christmas? It feels like only yesterday I was decking my halls with boughs of holly, and wassailing merrily away, singing carols, sipping wine, [...]
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How much historical data do you need to keep?

By Brian.Harris | Published: November 9, 2009
A bit like Dr Who, SQL Response 2 will allow you to “rewind time” back to a specific point – for example 2 minutes ago, last Wednesday, six weeks, or even six months earlier – to see overview data for a server or SQL Server instance exactly as it was at that point in time. [...]
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Machines, servers, physical servers, SQL servers…

By Brian.Harris | Published: October 23, 2009
One of the issues we are encountering on a daily basis in the development process for SQL Response 2 is the question of how you think about your monitored servers. SQL Response 2, like version 1, will monitor both SQL Server issues (deadlocks, job failures, blocked processes, long running queries, database status changes and so [...]
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Where do you locate your monitoring service?

By Brian.Harris | Published: October 14, 2009
SQL Server monitoring tools generally require somewhere to install the service that does the monitoring. In SQL Response 1, we required you to install an Alert Repository – a combination of a Windows service to collect data from your monitored servers and a repository for storing the collected data. In SQL Response 2, it’s likely [...]
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What metrics do you use? Part two: Disk

By Brian.Harris | Published: September 14, 2009
This is part two of our blogs about which counters you use when monitoring your servers. Click here for part one, about memory counters. Suggested Counters Disk space available The amount of disk space available, in GB, per logical disk. Logical disk idle time The percentage of elapsed time that the disk is not servicing [...]
Posted in Metrics | Tagged | 10 Comments

What metrics do you use? Part one: Memory

By Brian.Harris | Published: September 1, 2009
One of the key features of SQL Response v2 will be the ability to monitor a whole set of metrics in real-time across your enterprise from physical servers, SQL Servers, disks, network and so on. There’s a huge amount of information that we can and will display in SQL Response v2, but we’d like to [...]
Posted in Metrics | 9 Comments

The future starts here.

By Brian.Harris | Published: August 24, 2009
We’re delighted to get The Future of Monitoring site up and running, and we’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions (and hopefully, seeing your designs) for a great monitoring tool. We’d like to establish a community of real, opinionated, enthused people. That’s you lot, keen to tell us what we’ve got right, [...]
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