Evaluation Highlights

1. Getting Started
Installation and Setup Steps
There are three basic steps to installation and setup.
1. Install SQL Sentry
2. Complete the Setup Wizard
3. Start Using the Client
Please take a moment to read through the Quick Start Guide to ensure a successful installation. Refer to
the User Guide for detailed documentation regarding SQL Sentry concepts, terms, and features.
Once the product is installed, you'll have access to our complete User Guide from the client.
Quick Start Guide
If you receive an error message indicating "Action Canceled" or "The page cannot be displayed" when
trying to view the guide, then simply download the help file to your local hard drive and open from there.
If you receive an "Unknown Publisher" prompt when opening the file locally, be sure to deselect "Always
ask before opening this file" checkbox.
Important Concepts
Components
SQL Sentry's software consists of the Client, the Monitoring Service, and a SQL Server database. The SQL
Sentry database stores event metadata and history information collected by the SQL Sentry Monitoring
Service and the SQL Sentry Client provides a thin client interface for viewing and managing this
information.
Conditions and Actions
Each event connection (SQL Server, Analysis Services, Oracle or Windows) and each event object (job,
task, DTS package, etc.) support several conditions and several associated actions. Configuring actions
globally provides a powerful way to significantly reduce the setup and configuration time. Each condition
and action can be easily overridden at the individual connection and object level.
Watching Connections and Objects
When you have SQL Sentry Event Manager "watch" a connection or object via the context menu, this
simply means that Event Manager will begin monitoring it.
If you've not already done so, check out the Video Library for overview videos as well as in-depth reviews
of specific features.
2. Client Start Page
Using Performance Advisor and/or Event Manager
SQL Servers and Analysis Services can be watched with either Event Manager or Performance Advisor, or
both products within the same SQL Sentry Client. Note that certain functionality is only available when
watching a server with both products. Review the User Guide for complete details.
When you first install or upgrade, Performance Advisor may not be watching any servers by default. To
watch a server with Performance Advisor, right click on the server in the Navigator pane and select
Watch > Connection. You will then have a submenu that offers With Event Manager and With
Performance Advisor. Once selected, allow a minute or two for SQL Sentry to complete the initial
synchronization. You will also notice (EM), (PA), or (EM/PA) to the right of the server name and version in
the Navigator pane to indicate which products are actively watching that server.
Once you are watching a server with Event Manager, and the initial synchronization is complete, you can
open the Event Manager Calendar for that server by right clicking and selecting Open > Event Manager.
A new window will open in the main client workspace displaying the Calendar for that particular server.
Once you are watching a server with Performance Advisor, and the initial synchronization is complete,
you can open the Performance Advisor Dashboard for that server by right-clicking and selecting Open >
Performance Advisor. A new window will open in the main client workspace displaying the Dashboard for
that particular server. Also note the various tabs above the Dashboard providing access to all other major
Performance Advisor functionality.
Contacts Node
You can create users and groups to monitor the activity on different connections and be alerted for on
any condition that you set. To create new users and groups, go to the Navigator Pane and open the
Contacts submenu. When you right click on either the Users folder or the Groups folder, you can add a
new user/group. When you are setting up the new contact, you can set the rights for a user/group so
that they only have access to what they need to monitor. To set up alerting, go to the condition you want
to alert them on and under the Action Settings tab, you can check the box for the user/group. For more
details on the Contacts Node, check out our User Guide.
3. Performance Advisor for SQL Server
Performance Advisor for SQL Server shows the most important Windows and SQL Server performance
metrics side-by-side in a single view, so you have the full picture at a glance. Resource utilization is
integrated into the Windows network, CPU and memory charts, so you can see exactly how much of your
server resources are being consumed by each SQL Server instance.
Wait Type Analysis
Wait Type Analysis shows both high-level and detailed resource utilization, giving you an instant profile
for the SQL Server so you can see exactly which resources or subsystems may be causing slowdowns.
Wait types are grouped together into friendly categories, and meaningless wait types are eliminated.
Network Utilization
Network utilization is displayed by SQL Server instance and by network adapter.
Disk Latency
Disk latency charts show you exactly how long reads and writes are taking for each disk and each
database file, quickly highlighting disk bottlenecks.
4. Performance Advisor for Analysis Services
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor for Analysis Services shows the most important Windows and Analysis
Services performance metrics side-by-side in a single view, so you have the full picture at a glance. Easily
see how querying and processing tasks are utilizing and competing for the same resources, leading to
reduced querying or processing performance.
SSAS Bottleneck Analysis
Innovative performance profiling highlights bottlenecks in the formula engine, storage engine, or
elsewhere over any date range. Instantly see where SSAS is spending most of its time handling requests.
Real Time
Historical
High Impact SSAS Command Analysis
Performance Advisor for Analysis Services captures and aggregates all high impact SSAS commands
(MDX, DMX and XMLA), showing top commands by CPU and IO usage. Pinpoint problem SSAS queries,
and see exactly how much formula and storage engine time each query is using, as well as the most
heavily used partitions and aggregations.
5. Performance Advisor for Windows
Performance Advisor for Windows takes process and service performance monitoring to a new level. It
auto-correlates all Windows processes and services to go beyond one-process-at-a-time analysis provided
by other tools. It tracks historical performance so you can easily determine which processes or services
caused a performance issue at some point in the past. It also organizes related processes into friendly
groups, with both individual and group level metrics. Several groups come preconfigured, including
SharePoint, IIS, SSIS, and SSRS, and you can easily add custom groups.
Performance Advisor for Windows also includes a Processes tab. The tab contains a grid view of all the
processes which you are collecting information about, including related metrics.
6. Real-Time and Historical Performance Analysis
Easily switch between real-time and historical modes to view performance metrics for any point in time.
Use the Client toolbar to go back days or even months to see exactly how your SQL Server performance
has changed over time.
To switch to Historical Mode on the Performance Dashboard, click on the History button on the toolbar at
the top of the screen. The History view defaults to a 10 minute history that will continue to update. Use
the Start and End time selectors, Zoom buttons, and Interval selectors to jump to any point in time at
any range to explore server history.
You can also highlight any time slice within any chart, and the dashboard will synchronize all charts and
enable you to zoom into a time slice, or jump to another section of Performance Advisor or Event
Manager for the selected date range. For example, you can jump directly to the Event Manager calendar
or the Top SQL tab to see exactly which events occurred during a spike in CPU activity.
7. Disk Activity, Latency and Capacity
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor provides a revolutionary, patented graphical view of your server's disk
topology and activity. The Disk Activity view shows you exactly how data is moving through your disk
system, highlighting bottlenecks at the database file, physical disk, or controller level.
View disk activity in real-time mode, or historical mode for any date range, and easily identify common
configuration problems such as mixing busy data and transaction logs files on the same physical drive.
Single click on any file to reveal a tool tip displaying current statistics, as well as highlight the
corresponding file on the list view.
8. Top SQL
In the Top SQL view, you can see details about any live or historical long running and/or high impact
statements. You can see the specific statement that was executing, database, host, application, and login
along with pertinent performance metrics. All of the information is provided in a highly customizable grid
view that allows you to sort, rearrange, or filter on any column for raw or normalized metrics.
You can also set Top SQL thresholds based on duration, CPU, reads, or writes.
9. Index Analysis
If you have Fragmentation Manager, then you will have access to advanced tools to help manage your
index fragmentation. You have the ability to perform automated defragmentation operations based on a
schedule you set and the ability to enable post defragmentation analysis operations. You also have the
ability to initiate manual defragmentation operations from the SQL Sentry Client. Fragmentation Manager
also gives you access to historical information about index fragmentation in your environment including
historical charts, which summarize both detail level and overview level fragmentation statistics.
You also have 2 different ways to view all of the important statistics for your indexes. The first way is the
Grid View, which allows you to view index related statistics in a tabular format. It shows statistics about
your individual indexes, including size, average percent fragmented, average percent page space used,
fill factor, and much more.
The other way to view your indexes is the Tree View. The Tree View is the same as the Index Grid View
except that it’s organized by databases on the monitored SQL Server instance. This view allows you to
drill down into information at the table, index, and partition levels as well.
10. AlwaysOn Monitoring and Management
In the AlwaysOn tab, you have access to information that you will need about your AlwaysOn
environment. The tab is divided into three main areas: the Overview Area, the History Area and the
Details Gridview Area. In the Overview Area, you can choose between several unique layouts to display
your AlwaysOn environment from different perspectives. You have the WSFC Members layout, which
offers a high level perspective of the topology, including file share or disk witnesses, as well as
aggregated data flow between WSFC nodes.
You also have the WSFC Node/Group Matrix layout offers a grid-style presentation of the entire WSFC, by
node and by Availability Group.
Another layout is the Groups/Replicas layout, which shows the performance, health, and configuration of
each Availability Group.
In the AlwaysOn tab, you also have the History Area that displays historical charts and AlwaysOn health
events from your environment and the Details Gridview Area, which displays both high level and detailed
level metrics concerning your environment.
11. Query Plan Analysis
The Query Plan tab come with integrated Plan Explorer functionality to give you dramatically enhanced
visibility into SQL execution plans. In the tab, you are given a list of all plans collected for Top SQL events
in a specified range. The plans with the highest cost operations are highlighted so you can easily see
which plans may lead to a performance problem. You view the plans and even make modifications to the
statements from inside the client. After you make the modifications, you can retrieve the estimated or
actual plans to determine how effective your changes will be.
12. Block and Deadlock Analysis
Blocks
SQL Sentry Performance Advisor's hierarchical display of all blocking chains provides the most complete
picture of blocks available. Wait Resources are automatically resolved for you, so for the first time, you
can instantly see which tables or indexes are being contended for without any manual effort!
Deadlocks
Unlike other deadlock graphing tools, deadlock nodes in Performance Advisor contain the concise
information you need to quickly visualize the deadlock and determine the root cause. You get a graphical
display of all deadlock types, synchronized with an innovative grid-based display to provide the most
complete picture of SQL Server deadlocks available.
The grid display lists all nodes organized by resource, owners and waiters, and includes the full SQL for
all nodes!
13. Quick Trace®
Quick Trace provides a complete picture of exactly which processes are doing work on the server by
automatically correlating trace and process activity data together for the first time. Totals are provided
for CPU, I/O, network, batches, transactions, cache misses, recompiles, cursor operations, and many
other valuable SQL Server metrics.
Never again will you have to deal with continually starting and stopping Profiler and refreshing Activity
Monitor, and tediously correlating and calculating aggregates!
There are several ways to execute a QuickTrace. Right click anywhere on the Dashboard, Disk Activity, or
Disk Space views within Performance Advisor, click on Run QuickTrace from the QuickTrace tab, or click
on the Run QuickTrace button on the Client toolbar.
Quick Trace can also be automated in response to many different conditions such as "Blocking SQL", so if
a problem occurs after hours you'll always have the full details.
14. Visual Schedule Management
No more trying to use "Next Run Date" to guess a server's job schedule!
Unprecedented Visibility and Control
The visual calendar highlights schedule overlap and contention issues, long running events, failed events
and more using clear visual indicators. Quickly view historical and future schedule information at a
glance, and easily resolve conflicts using drag-and-drop. Note that the drag-and-drop feature is disabled
in the trial version.
If your calendar shows a lot of orange shading there may be resource contention between scheduled
events, which can result in longer run times and an increased chance of event failure.
Global Calendars
The primary purpose of the Global Calendar is to very quickly see those events that are of most interest
to you across the entire enterprise, without having to click through every server calendar, or all of the
various list views in the native tools.
The Shared Groups global view includes all watched SQL Server, Oracle and Windows connections. By
default, the Shared Groups global view shows only historical events and is filtered to show only failed
events, or events with a duration greater than one minute. Using no filter on large environments can
cause "information overload" very quickly. The SQL Servers global view contains watched SQL Server
instances that are registered in the native client tools.
Future and running events are disabled in global views, but you can adjust the runtime filter and other
filter criteria on the Event View filter tab to further refine the display for personal preferences.
Custom Event Views
You can quickly group common events or servers in a single calendar view. Custom Event Views allow
you to easily group jobs, servers or other items of specific interest into one calendar view for quick
review and access. Custom Event Views are typically used to:
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Show all events associated with a shared resource, i.e. SAN, NAS, or certain network segment.
Eliminate backup contention across servers competing for SAN and network resources
Optimize backup performance - native AND compressed backup systems
Monitor and manage log shipping and replication across your enterprise
Provide DBAs with a view of specific jobs they're responsible for managing
If you've not watched our Event Manager Overview video, take a moment and let us describe the main
features, so you'll know what to look for during your evaluation.
15. Alerting and Response System
Do you currently go through the time consuming activity of configuring each server and each job to
establish a basic level of alerting for failed events?
SQL Sentry Event Manager is agent-less, fault tolerant, and uses a centralized management system which
eliminates the need to touch each server.
Conditions and Actions
Event Manager can generate email or pager alerts, and take various corrective actions using event status,
runtime, or performance information. And there are over 90 conditions that Event Manager can be
configured to monitor.
When you receive a notification or alert, Event Manager goes beyond the limited capabilities built-in to
SQL Server, Oracle, and Windows with messages that include granular, detail-level information. Event
Manager alerts contain more of the information you need to quickly evaluate and resolve any job
condition, which dramatically reduces your response time. For more detailed information, please refer to
the Conditions and Actions section of the User Guide.
Global Event Actions
Every new scheduled job inherits a baseline set of alert conditions that have been established for the
watched server environment, regardless of who schedules the job. The global configuration ensures that
a baseline level of notification and response actions applies to all jobs. Check out Global Event Actions for
more information.
16. Schedule Performance Monitoring
Have you ever been burned by a "hung" job that never failed, but chewed up valuable resources and
caused performance problems?
SQL Sentry Event Manager continuously monitors job and task runtimes and generates alerts based on
defined minimum or maximum runtime thresholds. You can set thresholds at the global, server, or joblevel and be alerted whenever any job, task, report, or DTS package in your enterprise runs above or
below a certain percentage of its "average" runtime, as well as an explicit value such as "1 hour".
Monitor Schedule Performance
Event Manager makes it simple to link any Windows performance counter directly to any job, task, or
report and see exactly what impact it's having on performance throughout its run lifetime. Event Manager
automatically enables and disables counters as needed, minimizing server and network overhead. Refer
to the User Guide section on Performance Monitoring for information on the configuration of Event Object
and General Performance Monitoring for your environment.
Monitoring Disk Contention
Unusually heavy contention for disk resources can dramatically impact SQL Server performance, and
Event Manager makes it simple to see exactly what role jobs are playing in this issue. Many types of jobs
are some of the biggest offenders since they incur disk IO's outside of the SQL Server process space,
meaning SQL Server isn't in direct control of prioritizing all of the reads and writes.
With Event Manager, you can quickly get at the root of disk-related performance issues by linking diskrelated performance counters to a job with a few mouse clicks. Event Manager will automatically start
and stop the counters according to the job's schedule, and generate insightful graphs which visually
correlate the job's run lifetime with performance counter activity. See Monitoring Disk Contention for
more detail.
17. Graphical Reporting
You believe your database environment is running slower than normal but how do you present the details
to management?
SQL Sentry Event Manager's schedule performance and event runtime graphs enable quick trend
analysis, and Gantt-style performance graphs highlight the events competing for resources and causing
end-user performance problems.
Schedule Performance
Event performance graphs clearly illustrate how schedule collisions may be impacting server and
database performance. Any Windows performance counters, including any SQL Server counters, can
easily be "linked" to a SQL Agent job, Windows task or Reporting Services report, and performance data
will be automatically collected whenever the scheduled event runs. Combination Gantt / Bar graphs are
used to visually correlate schedule activity and performance data in an easy to read format.
Runtime Graphs
Event runtime graphs provide both historical and aggregate views, making it easy to spot runtime trends
that can be an indicator of underlying scheduling and/or resource contention issues. For example, you
can see how your nightly backups are trending over the past 3 months to determine if and when they'll
fall outside of your desired backup window.
18. SSIS and DTS Support
Tired of the scavenger hunt required to track down all the details you need to resolve an issue with your
DTS packages and SQL Server 2005 SSIS packages and maintenance plans?
Problems with SSIS and DTS packages can be some of the most difficult to troubleshoot, because there is
no easy and unified way to access detailed package log data via the native SQL Server tools. SQL Sentry
Event Manager can provide step level details for all your events with just a few clicks of the mouse from
any calendar or history list view.
Enabling Package Logging
To enable logging for a DTS package, open the package in DTS Designer then right-click the white space
and select Package Properties. On the Logging tab check "Log package execution to SQL Server".
For SSIS packages it's even easier. SQL Agent jobs that have one or more steps with a subsystem type of
"SQL Server Integration Services Package" will display an extra option on their context menu, "SSIS
Logging Options", which makes it easy to enable/disable SSIS Logging. This includes native maintenance
plan jobs on SQL Server 2005, since they utilize SSIS. See the User Guide for complete details.
Viewing Step Details
SQL Sentry makes it easy to view the results on the SQL Sentry calendar and history list views alongside
any other events on a server. Accessing error details for failed package steps has never been simpler!
The package step details can be shown by clicking on the grayed area on the bottom right of the event
instance.
19. Chaining and Queuing
Did you ever wish you could find just a few more hours in your maintenance window, or need to have
jobs run in a particular sequence?
The advanced chaining features in SQL Sentry Event Manager can assure that interdependent jobs run in
the proper order without wasting time or resources.
Chaining
SQL Sentry Event Manager allows you to chain SQL Agent Jobs, Windows Tasks, or Oracle Jobs across
servers. You can enforce dependencies and automate workflow throughout your entire enterprise, even
across platforms! The graphical chaining interface allows you to design the workflow using variables such
as completion, success, or failure. More details are available in the User Guide, but take a few minutes to
watch our two video tutorials on chaining - Graphical Chaining Interface and Advanced Chaining.
Queuing
Event Manager can also keep lower priority jobs from stealing resources and slowing the performance of
higher priority jobs. The Queuing feature allows you to temporarily pause the execution of lower priority
jobs to prevent resource contention while the higher priority job runs. As soon as it's complete, you can
configure the queued job to start immediately after leaving the queue, or resume its normal schedule.
More details can be found in the User Guide.
20. Cross-Platform Support
Wouldn't it be nice to see your entire enterprise in one global view?
Event Manager seamlessly integrates external event data into calendars, and gives you unprecedented
visibility and control over all of the events that can impact your server performance. Event Manager
supports SQL Agent jobs, Windows Tasks, SharePoint jobs and Oracle jobs in increasingly complex crossplatform environments.
SQL Server, Oracle and Windows
Just as SQL Agent jobs and Oracle jobs can impact server performance, so can, for example, a Windows
Task running a disk defragmentation. DBAs need to know about all of those events since they're using
the same CPU, RAM, and disk resources.
Using a plug-in architecture, Event Manager connector modules allow these popular external systems to
be integrated and easily managed through the Event Manager Client. Event Manager automatically brings
all of these events together and displays them on its unified calendar, so you get the whole picture, not
just part of it.
Automation
Once the data is collected from multiple platforms, it can be used to trigger various actions such as
sending email notifications, executing other jobs or processes, or logging events. The cross-platform
capability of Event Manager allows it to manage and automate dependencies between different event
types and across multiple servers through chaining.
21. Performance Advisor and Event Manager Integration
Performance Advisor integrates with Event Manager through a single client to provide functionality that
simply is not available in other software applications. You can see Top SQL, Top Analysis Service Queries
(MDX, DMX, and XMLA), Blocking, and Deadlocks on the Outlook-style SQL Sentry calendar, alongside
SQL Agent jobs and other events. Chronological display of these types of events provides unparalleled
insight into how they impact each other which simply can't be ascertained from a grid. In the Microsoft BI
environment this allows you to easily visualize relationships between SSIS packages, Reporting Services
Reports, and associated high impact queries on your Analysis Services Server.
Double click on the event to jump directly into an in-depth analysis within the corresponding Performance
Advisor view.
You can also generate email and pager alerts whenever a:
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Query exceeds a specific duration, or contains specific text.
Block occurs with full block chain details, when a block exceeds a
specific duration, or when a blocking query contains specific text.
Deadlock occurs including the deadlock victim SQL, or when the
victim query contains specific text.