Sunday, September 8, 2013

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.

5 comments:

  1. Any tweaking to get disk latency monitors? Do you know which rule is responsible for collecting this data. Getting No data.

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  2. Important to know that the Dashboard Views are only working if you import the Management Pack from download. If you only update the MP within SCOM you won't get the new Dashboards available...

    Best regards,
    Jochen

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    Replies
    1. Good point Jochen - this is because the visualization MP's don't get imported through the download catalog.

      Thanks for the comment!

      Kevin

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  3. Thx for the download tip and the informative post!

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  4. hi all, I have this running nicely in my environment but I need these views into a custom management pack I have, how can I achieve this without granting the specific application owners to see things they shouldn't?
    Thanks
    Simon

    ReplyDelete