Download MS SQL Server 2005 Data Collector

MS SQL Server 2005
Data Collector
Status: 12/5/2008
theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
The performance features of the ApplicationManager Data Collector for MS SQL Server:.................................. 3
Overview of Microsoft SQL Server:.................................................................................................................... 4
The MS SQL Server Data Collector ................................................................................................................... 6
SQL Server Monitoring:.................................................................................................................................. 7
Database Monitoring...................................................................................................................................... 8
Performance and Capacity Management: ...................................................................................................... 9
Management of the Windows Operating System .......................................................................................... 11
Pre-defined Monitoring Policies.................................................................................................................... 11
Platform Support and Availability:................................................................................................................. 11
Appendix A: The Data Collector's Object Structure .......................................................................................... 12
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Introduction
There's more to efficient application management than maximizing availability. Targeted tuning can increase the
performance and stability of business-critical applications without having to invest in additional hardware
(processors, RAM, disk space).
A number of data collectors have been developed for theGuard! ApplicationManager that provide
comprehensive monitoring and generate detailed data analyses. Data collectors do more than simply collect
events according to pre-defined rules. They deliver every performance value and the current status of each
application object in real time. They also provide insight into configuration attributes, such as the release status
or the application's parameter settings. Data collectors model an application in objects and sub-objects, enabling
a dedicated handling of alerts, monitoring or status messages. This model ensures that information is clearly
structured and that messages are easy to allocate to a problem.
Pre-defined and reusable policies for each type of application facilitate the implementation of the solution and
the adaptation of monitoring to dynamic landscapes. The ease with which thresholds are set ensures the early
recognition of potential errors. Comprehensive reaction management enables flexible alerting for more than 100
different devices and alarm consoles.
The automatic discovery of new application instances and objects, including the automatic allocation of policies,
enables automatic monitoring even in those cases in which system administrators have completely reconfigured
the application, for example, by adding new instances or objects.
Central reporting at the application instance and application object level provides for a detailed and effective
capacity management of all resources.
Integrated Service Level Management ensures that the service levels for application availability and
performance are achieved, while Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) can be easily defined at the application
object level.
The performance features of the ApplicationManager Data
Collector for MS SQL Server:
The data collector for Microsoft SQL Server enables the comprehensive management of Microsoft SQL Server
2005.
With ApplicationManager, a number of MS SQL servers including the databases can be monitored and
compared at the same time.
All of the components of a Microsoft SQL Server, such as services and databases, are defined and analyzed
individually within the framework of the CIM model as managed objects (MO). This enables information to be
clearly structured and the components to be individually controlled. The MS SQL data collector is a very
powerful application that consists of a number of objects, event calendars and performance counters. All of the
information is described in the data collector's online documentation. This document provides an overview of the
most important functions.
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Overview of Microsoft SQL Server:
Microsoft SQL Server, a relational database system based on the SQL standard, is generally used to provide
©
with high speed the high data load of business-critical applications such as SAP R/3 , to manage the data and
to store it permanently. A business-critical application can only be operated smoothly, if the underlying Microsoft
SQL Server is high available and does not create bottlenecks.
The additional Analysis Server is the central main component to operate as BW-System (OLAP) and will be
promoted with SQL Server 2005. As the SQL Server is more and more in use as central database, services like
SQL Server Agent for background processing and data exchange gain more and more significance.
The architecture of the Microsoft SQL Server allows one or more different databases to be managed by a single
server process (Win32 service). It is possible to run several databases with just one SQL Server, for example for
different applications or business divisions.
Every database consists of data files and transaction log files which are combined in so-called filegroups. A
database consists at least of one filegroup for data files and one for the transaction log file. These groups
consist of at least one data file respectively one transaction log file. It is possible to add more data files to a
filegroup in order to increase the volume of a database according to the requirements. Further filegroups for
data files can also be added.
In addition to the user or customer databases that contain the actual application data, Microsoft SQL Server
needs four so-called system databases, "master", "model", "msdb" and "tempdb", which are created during the
installation of the SQL Server. The SQL Server needs these system databases to manage internal system
information and parameters.
It is possible to operate several, completely independent Microsoft SQL Server 2005 instances on large and fast
server systems.
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Architecture of a Microsoft SQL Server system:
MS SQL Server Instanz 3
MS SQL Server Instanz 2
System Databases
MS SQL Server Instanz 1
System Databases
master
model
msdb
Database
tempdb
Data Filegroup
System Databases
master
model
master
msdb
model
User Databases
tempdb
msdb
User Databases
Database
Database
Database
1
2
Database
1
2
3
Database
2
Database
3
DataFile
DataFile
DataFile
tempdb
Transaction Log
Database
n
3
User Databases
Database
Database
Database
1
DataFile
LogFile
Database
n
LogFile
LogFile
LogFile
Database
n
Database Connections
Microsoft SQL Server System
DB-Client
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DB-Client
DB-Client
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
The MS SQL Server Data Collector
The data collector allows monitoring all installed Microsoft SQL Server instances including its corresponding
databases.
The following figure shows the status of all objects of a single Microsoft SQL Server in theGuard!
ApplicationManager's Managed Monitor. Appendix A contains a list of the objects.
All important components of an SQL Server system, such as SQL Server instances, databases, SQL Server
agent instances, analysis server, etc. are defined and displayed as Managed Objects in the Managed Monitor.
The Managed Objects are hierarchically arranged and clearly structured thus providing the current status of
every SQL Server component at a glance. It is possible to customize monitoring parameters individually for
every component.
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
SQL Server Monitoring:
Different criteria can be used to monitor and analyze every instance of a MS SQL Server:
 Status of SQL Server instance (Win32 Service)
 Monitoring of SQL server log files
 Windows event log events generated by SQL Server
All of the monitored functions can be customized individually and separately for each SQL Server instance.
In addition to the monitoring a lot of useful information regarding an SQL Server instance can be displayed in
the Managed Monitor.





Detailed version information
SQL Server logins
Internal SQL Server processes
Active client connections with the SQL Server
SQL Server server-service information
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Database Monitoring
Databases are important objects regarding the monitoring of the availability, because the availability of
applications depends directly on the availability of their databases. All databases of the MS SQL Server can be
monitored individually for a large number of different criteria:





Database status
Database availability for clients
Required disk space for data files and transaction log files
Automatic file growth of data files and transaction log files
Check, if database options have been changed
In order to check the status, a client connection to the corresponding database is automatically established, thus
monitoring the availability of the databases at the same time.
All of the monitored monitoring sampling rates can be customized individually and separately for each database.
The database properties such as database options, total required disc space for data files and transaction log
files, file groups, files and configuration, database users, locks, etc. can be directly displayed in the properties.
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Performance and Capacity Management:
Managed Objects such as SQL Server instances or databases display a great number of statistical values
regarding their real-time status: utilization and performance values such as number of current client
connections, required disk space, database size, transaction log file size, transactions/sec, buffer cache hit ratio,
etc.. Now in the new version of SQLServer 2005 also data files can be permanent ly monitored and analyzed
regarding the free and used space in per cent and in megabytes. One can set thresholds for each statistical
value, which will generate alerts if violated. This feature also is used for functional and performance
monitoring. The statistical values can also be collected in the ApplicationManager database and evaluated
using REALTECH Reporting. These reports can be used for trend analysis regarding for example the
consumption of disk space as a basis for cost and capacity planning.
It is also possible to display and compare all statistical values in the Realtime-Performance-Monitor, which is
very useful for the performance and memory optimization.
The figure shows the number of transactions/sec of different databases in the Realtime-Performance-Monitor.
These views can be used to compare the performance and utilization of the different SQL Servers or databases,
for example to distribute the load more efficiently or to change the hardware configuration of individual
computers.
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 offers, in opposite to SQLServer 2000, definitely more monitoring possibilities, which
also appears in the new data collector.
Thus, for the AnalysisServer, a large number of new performance counters is available for the utilization of the
main memory. For performance and tuning there is now an additional possibility to monitor Cursor Manager
regarding various performance values. The same applies to SqlServerAgent that delivers code numbers for
jobs and job-steps (see appendix A of this Whitepaper).
With theGuard! ApplicationManager all services of the SQLServer 2005 can be run reliable and effective.
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Management of the Windows Operating System
In order to provide complete security for a Microsoft SQL Server one should monitor essential parameters of the
Windows operating system, such as physical hard disks, processor utilization, page file, etc. These and other
values can be gathered and evaluated with the Windows 2003 - Windows 2000 data collector (see the White
Paper for Windows data collector").
Pre-defined Monitoring Policies
The MS SQL Server data collector contains a number of comprehensive pre-defined policies for each object
type, such as server or database.
Platform Support and Availability:
The Microsoft SQL server data collector supports the operating systems Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.
The data collector is generally available.
For more information about REALTECH’s software
solutions see:
www.realtech.com
REALTECH AG
Industriestr. 39c
69190 Walldorf  Germany
Tel: +49-(0)6227-837-591
Fax: +49-(0)6227-837-837
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.realtech.com
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theGuard! ApplicationManager – Microsoft SQL Server Data Collector
Appendix A: The Data Collector's Object Structure
The data collector is structured in object types, which among other things, is essential for the configuration and
allocation of events as well as for all of the other functions:
Object
Server
SQL Server Agent
Database
Locks
Plan Cache
Buffer
Broker Activation
SQL Errors
Exec Statistics
Database Mirroring
Wait Statistics
Cursor Manager
Jobs
JobSteps
Metrics
One to n MS SQL Server
instances per Managed Node
One SQL Server Agent per
MS SQL Server instance
4 system databases and n user
databases per MS SQL Server
instance
7 different lock objects per MS
SQL Server instance
6different Plan Cache Objects
per MS SQL Server instance
One to n Buffer Partition Objects
per MS SQL Server Instance
3 + n (per user-database) Broker
Activation-Objects per MS SQL
Server instance
5 different SQL Error Objects per
MS SQL Server instance
4 different Exec Statistics
Objects per MS SQL Server
instance
1 object per Mirror Server, whch
is connected with the SQL Server
4 different Wait Statistics Objects
per MS SQL Server instance
5 different Cursor ManagerObjects per MS SQL Server
instance
4 different Job Ojects per MS
SQL Server instance
Theme
SQL Server monitoring – activity and
memory usage on server level
SQL Server job monitoring (i.e. backup
jobs)
Database monitoring – activity and data
volume on database level
12 different JobSteps-Objects
per MS SQL Server instance
JobSteps monitoring
Locks for different resource types, such
as databases, tables, keys, etc.
Memory utilization to store objects, like
stored procedures
Utilization of free pages
Information about tasks that are started
by the Service Broker
Information about SQL server errors
Information about different actions
Report information about database
mirroring
Information about delays
Cursor information
Job monitoring
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