SQL Server Tacklebox- P30: This book, as with almost all books, started out as an idea. I wanted to accumulate together those scripts and tools that I have built over the years so that DBAs could sort through them and perhaps adapt them for their own circumstances. | Chapter 6 Monitoring and NOTIFICATIONS As is probably clear by this stage there are many potential monsters lurking around corners waiting to pounce upon the unwary DBA as he goes about his day-to-day duties. Often however the biggest problem is not the monster itself but the fact that the DBA is unaware that it exists. Imagine a problem as trivial as a SQL Agent Service that fails to start a very easy problem to fix once you know about it. But what if you don t know about it and then suddenly find out that the backup process that this service was supposed to be running has not been executed for over two weeks The feeling at this moment for a DBA or DBA manager is one of frustration and disbelief. These emotions are quickly displaced however perhaps after a few minutes alone with the warm blankie and a soft floor by an unswerving confidence. This confidence derives from that fact that you know that positive steps will be taken to ensure that this never happens again. In this chapter I will describe how I use monitoring tools and techniques to make sure that my Blackberry will always buzz whenever a backup fails a disk drive fills up or a rogue process is threatening the performance of a SQL Server. When the inevitable happens and the e-mail notification hits your mobile device probably at some awful hour of the morning I ll show what you can do to easily ascertain the problem and be notified using a mix of third party tools such as Red Gate s SQL Response and standard tools like Database Mail. Types of monitoring and notifications The DBA s life is one of vigilantly overseeing not only the SQL Servers themselves but all of the events that take place on the servers. When I say events I am not specifically referring to error events that cause entries to be added to the Windows Event log or SQL Server Error log though these are certainly included in an overall monitoring and notification strategy. Here I am referring to events such as SQL Server Agent job failure or .
