SQL Response^™

Ensuring optimum performance of your SQL Servers is essential for any enterprise. Downtime or slow-running servers can have serious implications for your organization. No-nonsense monitoring with SQL Response enables you to proactively monitor your servers from a single, intuitive interface. It sends immediate email alerts when a problem occurs, and provides you with enough diagnostic data to resolve the issue quickly and easily so the impact of any problems is minimized.

SQL Response is a monitoring tool that provides you with information and data about problems as they happen, so you do not need to manually check your servers for problems. Instead, with SQL Response, you can work proactively to diagnose and resolve problems sooner.

SQL Response's information and data about each alert raised is intuitively presented. SQL Response does not directly fix the problems related to any alerts raised for your SQL Servers.

The latest version of SQL Response is version 1.1. If you are a new user, you can download it and try it out for 14 days. If you are a current customer, you can upgrade to the latest version, by performing a Check for Updates from the Help menu of the program. If you would like more information about how to use Check for Updates, please see the information page in Support or contact us directly.

SQL Response monitors your SQL Servers for a set of pre-configured alerts, relating to your SQL Servers' availability and performance. SQL Response does not provide a dashboard view to show the status of SQL Server performance across the enterprise. Instead, SQL Response notifies you when a problem has arisen, so you can focus on problems that matter most to your SQL Servers' health.

SQL Response provides both alerts and recommendations so you can boost SQL Server availability and health. Alerts and recommendations both function as alerts to problems on your SQL Servers, but the difference between them is in the information accompanying each type. A recommendation provides you with suggestions, based on best practices, for how you could resolve the problem. An alert contains useful diagnostic data to help you resolve the problem.

SQL Response does not require any components to be installed on the individual SQL Servers you wish to monitor. When SQL Response has not been configured to capture SQL Profiler trace data for a particular SQL Server, the performance hit of using SQL Response to monitor that SQL Server is negligible. When SQL Response has been configured to capture SQL Profiler trace data, the performance hit for monitoring a particular SQL Server with SQL Response is around 5%.

See How can capturing SQL Profiler trace data help me for more information on overhead when capturing SQL Profiler trace data.

SQL Response can be configured at any time to capture SQL Profiler trace data for a particular SQL Server. Trace data is generated by SQL Profiler, a native tool in SQL Server that enables you to monitor events on a specified SQL Server.

Normally, when you use the SQL Profiler tool to capture trace data, you have to manually create and configure the trace. With SQL Response, you simply click a checkbox to enable SQL Profiler to capture trace data automatically for a specific type of alert.

Enabling the collection of trace data lets you review the key SQL statements that were executing around the time of a raised alert. SQL Profiler trace data captured from just before and after the alert will be displayed as part of the diagnostic data provided by SQL Response.

Note that enabling the optional capturing of SQL Profiler trace data will increase processor activity on that SQL Server (typically, by up to 5%). Enabling collection of trace data on numerous computers can therefore reduce performance. For that reason, we recommend you enable trace data only on problematic SQL Servers.

An alert appears in SQL Response's GUI and you can also choose to receive an immediate email alert as a problem occurs. If you would like individual email addresses or group email addresses to receive email notification of an alert, simply register additional email addresses for the relevant server or group of servers.

Each type of alert in SQL Response can be configured so that it is raised at a particular level of priority – High, Medium, or Low. For issues that you do not want to monitor, you can choose to turn off the alert altogether.
                       
SQL Response is quickly and easily installed. It also works right out of the box with intelligent default settings. Clicking the Alerts Configuration button opens a dialog with tabs that help you determine whether different criteria for each alert apply to a particular server or a particular template for multiple servers. Note that you can set up templates in SQL Response for multiple SQL Servers that require the same configuration settings for alerts and recommendations.

A particular alert may require different settings for an individual SQL Server. To override group settings, click Configure a Server in the Alerts Configuration dialog. Drill down to click on the SQL Server, job, database or disk drive you wish to change the settings for and select the relevant alert you want to change.

You can revert the new setting to settings for a group at any time by drilling down to the alert on the server and clicking Restore settings from template.

SQL Response operates with a very low impact on your production servers in its default monitoring mode.

If you choose to enable the optional collection of SQL Profiler trace data on a specific SQL Server, processor activity will increase (typically, by up to 5%). The collection of trace data on numerous computers can therefore reduce performance. For that reason, we recommend that you enable trace data only on problematic SQL Servers.

No. SQL Response does not require you to install any components on your SQL Servers being monitored. SQL Response gathers its data from your SQL Server instances remotely at regular and frequent time intervals.

SQL Response has been designed to install quickly and easily. Working with sensible defaults out of the box, SQL Response also offers plenty of configurability so that it's a simple process for you to tailor the tool to your own environment. Usability of design has been a strong focus throughout the development of SQL Response, so you should be up-and-running with the tool and able to make tweaks and changes within minutes of the installation being complete.

SQL Response generates recommendations for a number of different
issues, including:

• Database needs full backup
• Database needs integrity check
• Indices fragmented
• Torn page/page checksum detection is off

Recommendations for these issues are for your information only and are based on best practices. If you resolve the issue, the recommendation is automatically removed from the list after a set period of time (you do not have to manually clear it).

You can view the set of recommendations that SQL Response offers by clicking the Recommendations tab on the main toolbar. It is possible to configure recommendations in the same way as you configure alerts, so that you can turn them off entirely or change the criteria that trigger each one.

The activation server looks for the XML data in the activation request. HTML formatted emails make it difficult for the activation server to locate the activation request in the message and, when it's not found, the server simply gives up and discards the email. To prevent this, always ensure that activation requests via email are in plain-text format rather than HTML.

If your trial period expires before you've had a chance to evaluate, please contact us and we would be happy to help.

You buy a license according to the number of servers you wish to monitor. You only need one license per monitored server, even if you have more than one instance of SQL Server running and even if you have a multi-processor server. You do not need to buy a license for SQL Response's Alert Repository or its client if these are both installed and used on different machines to the servers you wish to monitor.

Please read the license agreement for more information. If you have any further questions about licensing, please don't hesitate to contact us. We would be very pleased to help.

At Red Gate we believe in keeping things simple and transparent for our customers. We therefore have a per server pricing and licensing model for SQL Response.

You buy a license according to the number of servers you wish to monitor. You only need one license per monitored server, even if you have more than one instance of SQL Server running and even if you have a multi-processor server. Read full license details on our website.

SQL Response works with SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008.