Are You Monitoring Your SQL Server?

Your company is unique, and so is your data. Meaning that the way you monitor your SQL Server should be unique as well.

If you’re not monitoring your SQL Server, you should start now. Waiting until you have a performance problem is too late. While you will feel the impacts of a problem, you won’t have data that explains the cause to be able to mitigate these issues moving forward. This article will share some things you need to consider when monitoring your SQL Server.

Why monitor?

Successful monitoring of your SQL Server will help you know there was an issue as well as its cause. Many organizations set up their systems to provide alerts. For example, they get an alert that they have high CPU on the database server. However, alerts alone will not help understand what happened and how to fix issues that arise.

By the time somebody logs in after receiving an alert, the event has already passed. Getting an alert is helpful but if you are not tracking the data needed to identify and mitigate the cause, it is unlikely a solution will be implemented so no future incidents will occur.

While SQL Server is a powerful tool, it requires customers to monitor and capture these events. By default, SQL Server will provide logs and Windows event logs. Meaning, this requires you – the customer – to monitor and save these events.

Be Careful! Too much monitoring can bog down your system

Constantly querying and reviewing information will put extra load on your server and bog it down. Capturing every little metric could exasperate an existing problem. Thinking strategically about what you need and don’t need to capture is crucial in what may strain an already struggling environment.

Too much noise

It’s easy to want to see any and all alerts. However, setting alerts improperly for all things is only going to generate a bunch of noise. That means when something REALLY wrong, it will get buried in the myriad of alerts you are receiving and you may miss it. Instead, monitoring for impactful events that could potentially cause an interruption to production is the first step to accomplishing this goal.

It is key to know if any condition is potentially causing an interruption to production or has already caused an interruption to production in the past. Getting alerted before end-users notice an impact is important. Having the ability to identify issues before they happen and to tackle conditions as they present themselves before you run into major issues will save end user headaches and mitigate running into them again.

Proactive monitoring helps supplement backup history

Monitoring of SQL Server jobs can be very important. Typically, standard monitoring of your software or notifications only captures failed jobs. But what happens if a job gets hung up or runs long?

Successfully backing up your jobs does not mean all of your databases are backed up. Supplemental monitoring of your backup history will ensure all your database backups are up to date.

In addition, monitoring your integrity checks will help identify database corruption. MiCORE has seen unattended corrupt database go on for months. Despite a perpetually failing job, it went undetected because an alert was not set up appropriately. Proper monitoring ensures you will catch issues much earlier and minimize the impact to the company, its data, and anyone relying on that information.

Make your monitoring work for you

What you capture and retain may be different than what requires an alert. In the beginning, the overarching goal is to be alerted for issues that occur and then understand why it happened.

You don’t just want to know what happened when it happens, you want to be able to take appropriate action to fix it.

Proper monitoring will also help leverage the information to identify and mitigate risks to other parts of your environment as well.

How a qualified DBA can help

Base-level SQL Server monitoring solution will tell you the basics of your standard up/down, disk full, high CPU information. A qualified Database Administrator will supplement that with solutions that monitor other SQL Server metrics through custom T-SQL scripts, PowerShell, or 3rd party tools.

Monitoring is unique to every company, and that’s where the proper partner will help you optimize your efforts and keep pertinent information up to date. A trusted partner like MiCORE will work with you to develop a monitoring solution that fits your unique environment.

Conclusion

You may not have the opportunity or time to stay current on most modern SQL Server features. Regardless of your current capabilities, you need access to a company like MiCORE to have your back for database administration and SQL Server Consulting Services. You will have access to a team that collaborates with our partners and learns from one another. MiCORE helps you stay up-to-date with the latest industry standards and best practices.

MiCORE assures its clients their critical database systems are fully covered allowing them to focus on the needs of their business. As a specialized database managed services and consulting organization, MiCORE works with different companies across various platforms and industries. MiCORE’s vast experience with a multitude of client engagements allows nimble engagement utilizing best practices to maximize database performance and stability.

MiCORE provides database support, consultation, and migration services for a diverse group of environments including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, major open source databases such as MySQL, PostgresSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, and any combination of these services. MiCORE also provides database cloud architecture, migration, and management across AWS, Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

MiCORE provides full time or augmented services across all your key platforms.

Contact us below for more details.
www.Micoresolutions.com