Merrill Aldrich : monitoring

Top Tools I Didn’t Know I Needed as a DBA

merrillaldrich — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:01:01 GMT

Today’s post is an unabashedly subjective plug for a bunch of unrelated tools I have come to rely on and love. I’m not really a “tools guy,” so there are no doubt better and worse tools for these tasks out there. I’m not affiliated with any of the vendors...(read more)

Visualize Disaster

merrillaldrich — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:21:00 GMT

Or, How Mirroring Off-Site Saved my #Bacon My company does most things right. Our management is very supportive, listens and generally funds the technology that makes sense for the best interest of the organization. We have good redundancy, HA and disaster...(read more)

SCOM, 90 days in, III. Stuff to Add

merrillaldrich — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:57:44 GMT

This is the third installment of a series on our deployment of System Center at my workplace, emphasis on SQL Server MP. At this point we’ve got Operations Manager installed, and up and running, and we’ve been able to categorize all the monitored servers...(read more)

SQLSat65, Great Perf Counters Poster from Quest

merrillaldrich — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:50:00 GMT

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Vancouver BC SQLSaturday this past weekend, and it was excellent! Great sessions, good facility, well attended. Nice work, and a huge thank you to the volunteers that made that happen. One side perk: I got a copy...(read more)

SCOM, 90 Days In, II. Noise.

merrillaldrich — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:43:34 GMT

Once you get past the basic architecture of a SCOM implementation, and build the servers, and so on, the first real problem is … well, noise. Suddenly (depending on how you deploy) the system will reach out, like marching army ants or some very clever...(read more)

SCOM, 90 Days In, I

merrillaldrich — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 04:11:51 GMT

At my office we’re about 90 days into our implementation of System Center Operations Manager for Windows Server and SQL Server monitoring. All in all it’s been a good experience, and I’m really excited to have access to this tool. I’ve logged a fair number...(read more)

POSH-y SQL Disk Space Monitoring

merrillaldrich — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 06:46:35 GMT

In a prior post I expressed my dismay that apparently Operations Manager (which I dig in other respects) has no love for SQL Server storage that uses mount points. Herewith, henceforth, forthwith is a PowerShell workaround I am using until I find out...(read more)

Using Historical Perf Counter Data For Storage Planning

merrillaldrich — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:42:00 GMT

Lately I'm faced with a fairly ambitious data center move, and at the same time with an initiative to consolidate sprawling SQL Servers onto centralized clusters. It's a chunk of work, but these two notions have fit together pretty well: as long as we're...(read more)

Red Gate monitoring team would like your suggestions

merrillaldrich — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:02:00 GMT

Via Brad McGehee I read that a small team from Red Gate is designing a new version of their SQL Monitoring tool, and they are trying to do the right thing by gathering the insight and preferences of real DBAs. I've personally used three of the other top...(read more)