I'm trying to find the best way to monitor my MS SQL server. I have been using pingdom for my web server and want to look at something else. I have done a lot of googleing but they all seem to be the same. Was hoping someone could tell me their good and bad stories that might make it easier to pick one.
It is just for the MS SQL server. Just need to know that it is up and that the queries are working. Needs to be remote!
If you want something designed for monitoring, what about Nagios for free? or maybe Whats-Up for a few bucks?
OpenNMS will happily poll your MySQL status variables as well as doing HTTP gets to make sure that your web boxes are serving HTML.
If you've got a Microsoft SQL Server environment running for your small or medium sized business, one thing you're definitely going to want to look into are server monitoring tools. Those tools can help make sure that you are constantly informed about what is going on with your server and can even help locate improvements and tweaks that you can make to increase performance as much as possible. You will also be able to use these tools to test various applications, troubleshoot potential problems as they arise and determine user activities to find out who is issuing which queries that are connected to the SQL Server.
One of the best ways to monitor your Microsoft SQL Server is with Microsoft's own System Center Management Pack. The pack gives users the ability to discover SQL Server versions 2005, 2008, 2012 and 2008 R2. The Microsoft System Center Management Pack will continually monitor components like server agents, databases and database engine instances for signs of trouble and potential areas where performance can be improved.
SQL Server database environments also often allow you to schedule jobs and set up various alerts that you can receive through e-mails when certain predetermined instances occur. If you want to continually monitor your server environment for things like failure of backups or failure of scripts, for example, you can schedule those jobs under the "Management" and "Agent Jobs" tabs in your management utility. You will then be alerted via e-mail whenever those instances occur.
The built-in database management tools won't cost you any additional money outside of what you already spent to set up the environment in the first place. Certain third party database management and monitoring tools, however, will require additional money to purchase and configure to provide the best resources possible.
