SCOM - New SQL Management Pack and Summary Dashboard Released

Microsoft has just released a new management pack update for monitoring SQL. We first got a preview of this management pack at the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS 2013) in Las Vegas during the Workloads: Managing Windows, IIS & SQL Technologies session and since then, we've been waiting in earnest for it's release - mainly because of the new SQL Server 2012 Summary dashboard that comes bundled with it.

The release of this MP is a bonus for me as it's just in time for me to be able to include it into my demo for my upcoming session at System Center Universe 2013 DACH.

Here's a screenshot of what the new dashboard looks like (keep in mind that this dashboard will only run on SQL 2012 databases):

The new MP comes with some additional monitors, rules and all round improvements - here's a list of them taken directly from the MP guide:

• Collect DB Active Requests count
• Collect DB Active Sessions count
• Collect DB Active Transactions count
• Collect DB Engine Thread count
• Thread Count monitor
• Transaction Log Free Space (%) monitor
• Transaction Log Free Space (%) collection
• Collect DB Engine CPU Utilization (%)
• CPU Utilization (%) monitor for DB engine
• Buffer Cache Hit Ratio monitor
• Collect DB Engine Page Life Expectancy (s)
• Page Life Expectancy monitor
• Collect DB Disk Read Latency (ms)
• Collect DB Disk Write Latency (ms)
• Disk Read Latency monitor
• Disk Write Latency monitor
• Collect DB Transactions per second count
• Collect DB Engine Average Wait Time (ms)
• Average Wait Time monitor
• Collect DB Engine Stolen Server Memory (MB)
• Stolen Server Memory monitor
• Collect DB Allocated Free Space (MB)
• Collect DB Used Space (MB)
• Collect DB Disk Free Space (MB)
• SQL Re-Compilation monitor
• SPN monitor improved
• Support for special symbols in DB names.
• Improved AlwaysOn seed discovery
• Run As configuration changes to support Low privilege for SQL Server 2012 Cluster
• Improved performance of AlwaysOn discovery
• Custom User Policy Discovery and Monitoring performance optimization
• Hid AG health object from Diagram view

You can download the MP and its associated guide from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=10631

As always, make sure you read the guide from front to back (this is a big one!) and test the MP out first before deploying into production.