There is a new index feature in Redgate Monitor, but it’s disabled by default. This post shows how to enable things.
This is part of a series of posts on Redgate Monitor. Click to see the other posts
Getting Indexing Information
If you look on monitor.red-gate.com, inside the details for one of your instances, there is a new Indexing tab. I’ve circled it below.
After clicking this, I see the data below for this instance. This shows me a lot of high level information usage on different indexes. The data shows index, then table, then database, but I can search/filter here. I can also sort by the columns, which contain size, updates, seeks, etc. Lots of data.
This is disabled by default, as the collection of this data used a lot of memory on the Base Monitor system for some users. Not necessarily something everyone wants, so we left it off.
You can, however, enable it.
Enabling Index Data
There is a doc page for this feature, which I show below. This is a fairly easy procedure, but not everyone knows how to do this, so I’ll explain.
If you look above, in the warning box, it notes how to enable this. From the base monitor, you need to add an environment variable.
To do this on Windows, the easy thing is search the start menu for “environ”. You should see something like this. Pick the “edit the system environment variables” item at the top.
This should bring up the System Properties in Windows (desktop or server). You can also search for environment variables in the Control Panel. Earlier version of Windows let you right click the system and select properties.
Notice the Environment Variables button at the bottom. We’ll click this.
This brings up a dialog that has two sections. We want the bottom, system variables, section. Click the New button at the bottom, below this list of system variables.
In the dialog, paste this in the variable name: SQLMONITOR_Indexes
For the value, add “on”. I’m not sure if this is case sensitive, but past in lower case.
Then you need to restart both the base monitor and the web server. This is in the Service Applet, where you can see the Base Monitor and the Web Service.
Note: depending on versions, you might see this as “SQL Monitor Base Monitor” or “Redgate Monitor Base Monitor”.
Restart both of these services.
When things come up, you’ll see blanks until some index data can be captured, but be patient and check back in an hour or two.
Make sure you monitor memory usage on your base monitor machine. If you find yourself running low, you can disable this by setting the system variable to off. Or delete it.
Or add more RAM. More RAM cures a lot of things.
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