SQL Server Tools
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Hello -
I'm researching and testing various tools to help administer our SQL Servers (2000 and 2005). We have around 50 SQL Servers and it's hard to keep everything straight. I'm looking for tools to help me manage the daily routine (check backups, space issues, stability, etc...). Do you have any recommendations?
We found some tools by Idera (http://www.idera.com) but they are pretty pricey. Very useful tools though. There has to be an open source solution out there but sometimes those are hard to find.
I would appreciate your expert advice/suggestions.
Thanks!
Mike
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Full Sun http://www.fullsun.net/ has a freeware tool, Quest does as well.
You get what you pay for here, spend some time looking and evaluating, but I think you will either end up using Management Studio or paying some money.
I suppose I am a bit bias for the Red-Gate tools (you may want to click the banner at the top of the screen).
You may also want to look at the SQL 2008 Management Studio - they have made some pretty nice improvements and you will get it when you upgrade.
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Besides the different tools available, you can also set alerts on various things you want to monitor.
You can get an alert when a SQL-job fails, when space drops below a certain value, when the CPU is a certain time under stress, etc.
Some of these alerts can be set by using SQL manager and some have to be set by Windows monitor.
The alerts can be made visible in logs and even sent by mail to you (enable SQLmail / Database mail)
Regards,
Hans
** Don't mistake the ‘stupidity of the crowd’ for the ‘wisdom of the group’! ** -
I'm using a combination of MOM 2005, SQL Management Studio, Brightstore and some scripts. I'd like to look at Redgate stuff in the future (I followed the AD banner and read about the SQL tools they have. Looks very good)
D
AMO AMAS AMATIT AGAIN
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I can fully recommend the red gate suite of tools (sponsors of this site) I had played around with the freeware tools from other companies and nothing i have used compares well to the red gate suite of tools, i guess as others have said you get what you pay for.
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1) Yet another get Redgate recommendation. I've been using their products for over 4 years, and they just keep adding more all the time. Get the toolbelt so you can get the latest toys as they come out.
2) Sql Server Management Studio, it's your friend. Grab books or take a class from some place like Learning Tree to crash course it. The more you know your tools, the more productive you'll be. Mine's opened on my system within the first hour at work - depending on email catchup, and it's one of the last things to get closed down each day.
3) Maintenance Wizard & Maintenance jobs in management studio. If you want to, you can have the jobs email you the results, and with 2005, you don't have to run an smtp gateway on the box to do it.
4) Go further - set the options under the jobs section to write to the windows event viewer, and have your ops people help you out with checking on jobs. Once it's in the event viewer, you get to tag into all the tools available on that side as well as what's in sql svr already.
5) Play nice with your network folks. Most have tools that can monitor services on the servers. My network buddies have it set up to page me whenever it doesn't get a response within a configurable time for sql, iis, and any other services I need to keep an eye on. Proactive is better any day than reactive. I really like calling the customer and saying, "yup, we're working on it, just in case you hadn't noticed the problem", rather than "there's a problem?" It's also nice to know for scheduled down times when stuff is down or back up. This means I'm not having to do the trip personally, but can rely on the other team members to do their part, and if I don't get the back up response when I expect it, I can call and find out if I do need to make that trip in.
6) Work with your operations people so you know how their backup strategy is and what the scheduling is. Make your strategy work with that. If you've got that many servers, maybe setting up a couple of combined backup areas is a way to go. Cut your backups initially to the local server, but copy them to a separate file share several times a day, and have the ops people backup from there as well. We've used this method for several years as a secondary system - transaction backups are at noon each day, and the db backup is in the evenings. For most of our stuff, recovery to one of these set points is all we need, and for the few dbs that have more activity, we do more frequent trans backups.
7) Be a developer. I've always been one, so the changes in 2005 to more programming weren't a big deal to me. I'm always amazed at the companies where the dbas and the developers don't talk, however. I'm not surprised when they tell me the problems they have, though. If you're not part of the development staff, and they actually do have design reviews, insist on being there. Simple stuff like knowing what indexes to build and what fields they are querying on - that's the type of information you won't get from a developer who doesn't know database technology, but should be part of what you'll get in a design review.
Brenda
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1. RedGate Tools are some of the best in my opinion
2. SQL Management Studio - Home grown scripts
3. Periscope (Performance Monitoring, not as robust as Idera, but better price)
4. MOM!!! - Everything you mentioned above MOM can monitor and report on. I have SQL Agent Jobs - Backups - Replication - Scripts - Disk Space - Performance - Services- and MUCH MORE all write events to the Event Log. MOM monitors all SQL Servers so you don't have to write scripts for all 50 of your servers for the same task, then MOM sends me an email which my Outlook rules pages me on depending upon events. Very sweet, proactive, but very time saving. Check it out. I think you would be surprised how many events MOM can watch. You can also write / tweak the rules with code.
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SchemaToDoc Enterprises (http://www.schematodoc.com) offers:
- SchemaToDoc - documents the structure of a database (Word and HTML output)
- DB Side-By-Side - compares the structure of any two databases or the same database at different points in time
- QueryToDoc - exports query results to Word or HTML
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I've used SQL Backup from Red Gate. I'm currently using Quest tools - LiteSpeed for compressed backups, Spotlight on SQL Server for perf monitoring and reporting, Capacity planner for index maintenance, reporting, and capacity planning.
Finally, I use a set of home-spun monitoring on older SQL Servers that for reasons cannot be upgraded or that I don't monitor with Quest tools.
Red Gate and Quest both have great tools. It really comes down to your needs and what you want to spend time and money on. Quest tools take more time to configure than Red Gate but have a few more options.
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I have used Quest Spotlight for a long time. It has saved lots of time and many times it help me fine tune the server very well. Many companies have the copies but some DBA not using it well. It is not too expensive compare to the amount of time you put to figure out what is going on in your server, while spot light can help you figure out quicker. I recommend this product to any every SQL DBA.
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Hi, for free quick search / smooth navigation Addin for SQL Server Management studio 2008/ 2012 you can look into SQL Hunting Dog.
It is free and very easy to use http://www.sql-hunting-dog.com
It is a plugin for SSMS and allows you find tables/stored proc with in a couple of keystrokes. Also it is extremely fast.
If you want to find a table, simply start typing its name (or any part of its name) and it will find all tables matching typed word:
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