Roundup of T-SQL Tuesday #66: Monitoring

T-SQL Tuesday #66 was hosted by me on May 12th. The topic of the month was Monitoring. We all monitor something while working with SQL Server, and this month’s blog posts covers all kinds of topics by DBAs, developers and BI professionals 🤓

Roundup of T-SQL Tuesday #66

Aaron Bertrand (@AaronBertrand) shows how you can use trace flags to babysit slow backups or restores.

Andy Yun (@SQLBek) reminds us that monitoring in development is important too! Deal with problems before they reach your production environment.

Angela Henry (@SQLSwimmer) tells how she became a better DBA by creating her own monitoring solution, and how having a monitoring solution in your toolbox can save you from having to look for a new job!

Ben Miller (@DBAduck) shares his PowerShell script for monitoring tables to watch trends of growth and activity in a database.

Björn Peters (@SQL_aus_HH) joined T-SQL Tuesday with a German post: Self-Repairing-Monitoring Solution oder was einem noch so versprochen wird.

Boris Hristov (@brshristov) encourages IT managers and decision makers to ensure that teams also show how to monitor solutions, and not just implement the latest cutting-edge technologies and expect it to work immediately.

Cathrine Wilhelmsen (@cathrinew) shows an example of a Real Time Monitoring solution developed in her company.

Chris Sommer (@cjsommer) points out some of the most important things a DBA must monitor, and also links to his recent post about Monitoring SQL Server Agent Jobs by using PowerShell.

Daniel Mellor ‏(@sqlsanctum) shows you step-by-step how to use the Utility Explorer to create a dashboard for monitoring and baselining SQL Server CPU and storage resources.

Ed Leighton Dick ‏(@eleightondick) explains how to use tables in the msdb database to monitor your backups.

Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr) discusses different monitoring approaches and methodologies.

Jason Hall (@SQLSaurus) reminds us to monitor the monitoring systems, they are also important parts of your environment.

Jeffrey Verheul (@DevJef) writes about different solutions you can use to monitor your environments.

Kenneth Fisher (@sqlstudent144) writes about a three tiered approach to monitoring when your company is unable to invest in monitoring solution licenses for hundreds of instances.

Lori Edwards (@loriedwards) reminds us that effective monitoring is more than just a high number of alerts.

Malathi Mahadevan (@sqlmal) uses a combination of third-party tools, out-of-the-box tools and custom tools to monitor environments.

Michael Bourgon ‏(@Mbourgon) shares a PowerShell script for capturing multiple servers’ Event Logs to a database.

Mickey Stuewe (@SQLMickey) created a custom solution to monitor all reports and shares the scripts used.

Nicky van Vroenhoven (@NickyvV) joins the T-SQL Tuesday blog party for the first time and shares what is important for him to monitor as a SQL / BI developer.

Richard Douglas (‏@SQLRich) writes about the sneaky Error 825 that disguises itself as just an informational message and why this should be explicitly monitored.

Rob Farley (@rob_farley) shows how to monitor skew in PDW and how it should be tracked over time when your data changes.

Robert L Davis (@SQLSoldier) explains how to make sense of errors in the Replication Monitor.

Robert Pearl (@PearlKnows) writes about how important it is to monitor your systems for a healthy SQL environment.

Robert Verell ‏(@SQLCowbell) shares how to use WMI and WQL with the native alert system to monitor security.

Steve Jones (@way0utwest) takes a more philosophical approach to monitoring and talks about why it is important to capture and monitor specific information that is critical to you.

Steve Thompson (@Steve_TSQL) shows how to identify potential bottlenecks by using Performance Monitor.

Tim Peters (@tpet1433) uses the Legend of Zelda Triforce to illustrate how solutions can be both easy, helpful and cheap.

Volker Bachmann (@VolkerBachmann) shares his step-by-step approach to implementing base monitoring.

Key Takeaways

Monitoring is a very wide, but also very important topic for all of us. Be proactive and monitor your databases, servers and environments (even test and development), and make it a goal to discover issues before your end users alert you. Invest in vendor solutions, use the tools available in SQL Server or write your own custom solutions, just make sure you monitor what is critical in your company. Capture data to see trends over time and use PowerShell to automate tasks. Also don’t forget to monitor the monitoring solutions!

Want to participate or read more?

Monitor the #tsql2sday hastag on Twitter the first week each month for the invitations. Steve Jones (@way0utwest) keeps an updated list of all previous T-SQL Tuesday Topics. If you ever need inspiration to write a blog post, just pick a topic and write away.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in T-SQL Tuesday #66! 🥳

About the Author

Cathrine Wilhelmsen is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, international speaker, author, blogger, organizer, and chronic volunteer. She loves data and coding, as well as teaching and sharing knowledge - oh, and sci-fi, gaming, coffee and chocolate 🤓