Tag: SQL 2012

New and Updated MPs: SQL Server

Today we see some MPs being updated and some new ones released all related to SQL:

Updated MP: SQL Server

The SQL MP which had new version just last month now is updated again. The previous release had some bugs which were addressed and fixed quickly:

  • Fixed CPU Utilization Monitor
  • Fixed SQL Server seed discovery for WoW64 environments
  • Alert severity of Average Wait Time Monitor was changed to Warning, added consecutive sampling to reduce noise, threshold was changed to 250
  • Alert severity of SQL Re-Compilation monitor was changed to Warning, threshold was changed to 25. The monitor was disabled by default.
  • Minor fixes

Great job by the team behind the MP for fixing those bugs quickly. The new version you can find here.

Updated MP: SQL Server

The SQL Server MP has reached version 6.4.0.0 introducing the following changes:

  • New Dashboard for SQL Server 2012 DB
  • New Monitors and Rules – only for SQL 2008 and SQL 2012

    • o Collect DB Active Connections count

    o Collect DB Active Requests count

    o Collect DB Active Sessions count

    o Collect DB Active Transactions count

    o Collect DB Engine Thread count

    o Thread Count monitor

    o Transaction Log Free Space (%) monitor

    o Transaction Log Free Space (%) collection

    o Collect DB Engine CPU Utilization (%)

    o CPU Utilization (%) monitor for DB engine

    o Buffer Cache Hit Ratio monitor

    o Collect DB Engine Page Life Expectancy (s)

    o Page Life Expectancy monitor

    o Collect DB Disk Read Latency (ms)

    o Collect DB Disk Write Latency (ms)

    o Disk Read Latency monitor

    o Disk Write Latency monitor

    o Collect DB Transactions per second count

    o Collect DB Engine Average Wait Time (ms)

    o Average Wait Time monitor

    o Collect DB Engine Stolen Server Memory (MB)

    o Stolen Server Memory monitor

    o Collect DB Allocated Free Space (MB)

    o Collect DB Used Space (MB)

    o Collect DB Disk Free Space (MB)

    o 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
  • Hided AG health object from Diagram view
  • Minor changes

The information is taken directly from the guide. It seems changes in the MP are a lot especially the SQL dashboard that was waited since it was shown at MMS 2013 earlier this year. Grab the latest version from here and start implementing it first on your test and development environments.

New MP: System Center Management Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse Appliance

There is a new MP on the horizon. Here is a feature summary from the download page:

  • Discovers SQL Server PDW Appliances, including the hardware manufacturer.
  • Monitors both hardware and software components of SQL Server PDW Appliance. This includes:
    • The ability to roll up the overall health information across hardware and software components.
    • The ability to detect and monitor nodes that belong to different SQL Server PDW failover clusters.
    • Custom diagram view to visually represent the PDW appliance hierarchy comprising of hardware and software components. This includes these three views:
      • Appliance view – high level health information of the overall appliance health and their individual nodes
      • Appliance nodes – view to represent the health of each of the nodes and their roles.
      • Alerts view –view for the IT operator to look at proactive monitoring alerts and take appropriate actions.
  • Custom e-mail template to provide more detailed information regarding the alerts.
  • Tasks to integrate with the various PDW admin console views.
  • Run-as profile to securely connect to PDW appliance for discovery and monitoring.

Remember to read the documentation which together with the MP can be found here.

Hyper-V and SQL 2012 – better together

Microsoft gave the task to Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to make Workload Performance Analysis of using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V and SQL Server 2012. Findings of this report you can find in this article.