About alerts - SQL Monitor

SQL Monitor raises alerts when it detects problems across your servers.

What alerts does SQL Monitor raise?

SQL Monitor alerts warn you about various issues on your host machines, SQL Server instances and databases.

List of all alert types raised by SQL Monitor

Event alerts and continuous alerts

The following types of alerts are Event alerts, which are raised for incidents that occur at a specific point in time:

Cluster failover
Deadlock
Job failed
SQL Server error log entry

Event alerts are raised at a defined level (Low, Medium or High) which you can configure.

All other types of alert are Continuous alerts. Continuous alerts can have the following status:

Active: the issue is still currently a problem
Ended: the issue has been resolved

Depending on the type of alert, the Active duration of an alert can be quite short, for example less than a minute for long-running query alerts, or several days or even weeks for backup overdue alerts.

Like event alerts, continuous alerts are raised at a defined level (Low, Medium or High) which you can configure. For continuous alerts, however, you can configure multiple thresholds, so this level can automatically escalate or downgrade while the alert status is Active.

Alert status

The status of each alert is shown in the Status column in the Alert Inbox:

DifferentStatuses

Alert level

The level at which each alert is raised is defined as part of its configuration. You can adjust this on the Alert settings page for each type of alert. For continuous alerts, you can also configure multiple thresholds:

MultipleThresholdsIntegrityCheck

In this example, only the Low and Medium levels are defined. You do not have to enable multiple thresholds.

Alert history

Each alert has a history, showing the time when it was raised, and for continuous alerts, the time when it changed level and when it Ended. If you clear an alert, this is also included in the history for that alert occurrence.

Move your mouse pointer over the Time column to view a history of the alert:

InboxHoverHistory

The history for a raised alert is also displayed in the Alert history tab on the Alert details page:

AlertHistoryTab

Alert occurrences

Each time an alert is raised, it is logged as an occurrence. An occurrence represents a single entry in the Alert Inbox.

Continuous alerts for a monitored object (a server, job or database) have to be Ended before a subsequent occurrence of that alert type can be raised. While the alert is Active, it is a single occurrence, even if its level changes several times.

You can browse historical occurrences of the current alert type for the current monitored object in the Occurrences tabs on the Alert details page:

Occurrences

Click on any occurrence to view its alert details.

To view the number of occurrences for each type of alert, go to the Alert settings page:

TotalOccurences

Alert times displayed in SQL Monitor

All alert times in SQL Monitor are displayed in the local time of your web browser, regardless of where the Base monitor server or your monitored servers are located.

SQL Monitor automatically converts all alert times to your local time.

For example, if an alert is raised on a server in London at 18:00 and you are using SQL Monitor in New York, the alert time will be displayed as 13:00 (local time for New York).

Note: The web browser clock and Base Monitor clock need to be synchronized for SQL Monitor to work correctly.

Working with alerts

Viewing a list of raised alerts

The Alert Inbox page lists all the alerts that have been raised. You can filter the inbox in many ways, to list only alerts that you are interested in.