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SQL Server Tips by Burleson |
Build versus Buy
When it comes to cursory, analytic, and 24 x 7 monitoring many SQL
Server performance analysts become confused over whether to buy a
third party monitoring package or build a system from scratch. There
are positives and negatives to each approach.
Buying a third party solution can work out well as long as the
system’s specific requirements are met. Cursory monitoring is
usually supported quite well by any of the major database tools
vendors, but it is also taken care of in Microsoft’s own Enterprise
Manager/Management Studio. Analytic monitoring is not accomplished
very well with Microsoft’s own tools, even in SQL Server 2005. There
are, however, a number of good third party analytic monitors on the
market that do support SQL Server quite well. Pulling the “buy”
trigger on a 24 x 7 monitoring solution is the point when things can
get confusing.
Some SQL Server professionals have succeeded at building a robust
around-the-clock monitoring system from scratch, but they have done
so at a cost of many man-hours. Such a system usually involves the
configuration of a number of stored procedures that are launched via
a scheduling tool, normally the SQL Agent. These procedures are tied
to a number of alerts that can call more customized scripts that
perform predefined corrective actions. And that’s just for one
server! The addition of other SQL Servers to the equation and things
can get messy fast.
This is not to say that building an in-house enterprise monitoring
system cannot be done, for there are plenty of installations that
have them. The cost of building and maintaining such a system needs
to be weighed. While it will not impact users financially from a
line-item budget standpoint, they might spend more than first
thought in other ways, such as man-hours for development and
maintenance, when everything is said and done.
The above book excerpt is from:
High-Performance SQL Server DBA
Tuning & Optimization Secrets
ISBN:
0-9761573-6-5
Robin Schumacher
http://www.rampant-books.com/book_2005_2_sql_server_dba.htm |
