MS SQL Monitoring

MS SQL is a relational database developed by MS SQL Corporation that efficiently stores, retrieves and manages data for many websites and applications. The performance of databases defines the success of organizations in providing the 24x7 level of customer satisfaction and smooth operations of day to day business activities. MS SQL Database Monitor helps you to monitor the performance of databases and provide extensive information so that necessary steps can be taken before a breakdown of vital business processes occurs.

MS SQL Database Monitoring with AppPerfect

AppPerfect offers MS SQL Monitoring solution in the form of AppPerfect Agentless Monitor. AppPerfect's Database Monitoring is the ideal solution to monitor your MS SQL resources. AppPerfect's Database Monitoring is found to be most efficient, reliable and accurate solution by its customers. Regular agents impose a substantial overhead on your server resources in terms of CPU and memory. By contrast, AppPerfect's MS SQL Monitoring solution implements Agentless Architecture and uses existing database services to extract database resource usage information. Database Monitoring with AppPerfect is extremely lightweight and adds negligible overhead to target system while monitoring.

Following steps will explain how you can configure AppPerfect for Monitoring MS SQL Database Resources:

1. Once you are logged into the Monitor Server you can see the Web-UI from which you can access all the features of the Monitor Server. Click the Monitors link from the top navigation bar. This will take you to Monitors tab. Click on Add button to Add a New Database Monitor.
2. Next Step is to define the Database Monitor. Provide the IP Address or Host Name of the target database server which needs to be monitored.
3. Select the Database Monitor Type from the drop down. AppPerfect can monitor Oracle 8.x/9.x/10.x, MS SQL Server, MySQL, DB2 and Sybase databases for performance and robustness. Select the monitor type which suits your requirement. For database specific configuration for monitoring refer to Database Monitor chapter.
4. Specify a meaningful identifier for the monitor which will help identify the monitor in future.
5. Specify the Data Fetch Interval which represents the time interval for which application should wait before fetching the monitoring data from the device. Monitoring Data will be fetched after every specified fetch interval. The smaller the time interval, the more granular the data. However, smaller time intervals also result in a much larger data set.
6. You can specify if the monitor should be Active as soon as its added or should it be in suspended state.
7. Next Option is to provide database specific configuration settings. AppPerfect uses JDBC protocol to connect to the target database and fetch the required monitoring information. Provide the user credentials, JDBC driver jar, JDBC driver class and connection URL for accessing database. Once you are done providing the database settings, click on Validate Connection button to confirm that MS SQL database is accessible.
   
   
8. Next Step is to Select the Attributes to monitor. Database Monitoring allows you to monitor crucial parameters such as Key Read/Write requests, Table locks, Threads information, Memory consumption, Connections information, Transaction Rate, User Call Rate etc. Select the parameters you need to monitor from the list of attributes shown. For details on supported attributes refer to Database Monitor chapter.
   
   
9. Next step shows the Attribute details of all the selected attributes in the previous step. You can customize the display labels for each of the attributes here.
   
   
10. Next step shows the Attribute Data conversion where you can convert the attribute value to required unit. You can configure the operation which should be performed on the attribute value to create the final output value.
    
    
11. Next step shows the Defining Rules view. This view will provide a list of all numeric attributes. You can select the attributes for which you want to add a rule. A rule is defined as a conditional or threshold value which when exceeds, a notification would be sent. In a typical workflow the monitors extract data from the monitored device and send it to the rules engine. The rules engine evaluates the data to ensure no rule is violated and then sends it to the view manager. However, if a rule is violated, a message is immediately sent to the notification server to alert the user about the rule violation.Rules can be defined at a later stage as well. For details on how you can add/edit rules for the monitor, please see the Rules chapter.
    
12. Next step shows the Security & Notification settings. When a rule is violated a notification is sent out to all the concerned users that a particular event has occurred and needs to be dealt with. This process is called notification. AppPerfect provides five modes of notification. They are Email notification, SMS notification, Custom notification, Log notification, Database notification, SNMP Trap notification. For details on each of the supported notification , please see the Notification chapter. In this view you can configure the type of notification which should be sent on Rule violation, Users/Groups to whom notification should be sent and also the subject and details on the notification message.
    
13. Click on finish button. We are done adding the monitor for MS SQL Database Monitoring. Once Database Monitor is added, you will get a message Database Monitor added successfully. Now go to Status. Expand the data for IP provided in IP Address while creating the monitor. Expand MS SQL Monitor. Click on + icon against the charts that you want to monitor in your Dashboard.