Using a PowerShell script that collects log data from a web server, plus a SQL Monitor custom metric, Phil Factor offers a way to check for suspicious website errors and unusual patterns of activity, right alongside your database monitoring. Read more
If a table runs out of IDENTITY values then it, and any dependent services and applications, will be "read-only" until the problem is fixed. Steve Jones explains how to set up a custom monitor to detect and prevent such problems. Read more
Phil Factor offers a clever way to report on a SQL Server intrusion, with a query that shows a full narrative description of all the security-related changes that have been detected by a set of SQL Monitor custom metrics. Read more
The best way to learn how to protect your databases from SQL Injection is to to see it in action and confront its consequences. This article tells the story of an attack on a vulnerable SQL Server REST interface, explaining how the attack unfolds, the mistakes that made it possible, and SQL Monitor's role as the 'canary in the mine'. Read more
Phil Factor uses the default trace and a SQL Monitor custom metric to alert you to unauthorized changes in security membership or permissions in any of your monitored databases. Read more
Phil Factor uses Extended Events and a SQL Monitor custom metric to detect when the metadata of a database has 'drifted', meaning that a database object has been created, deleted or modified outside of the official change management process. Read more
Rodney Landrum describes how a monitoring tool must help us monitor, analyze and predict resource usage, including costs, across a growing and diversifying estate, and also help the organization to connect server resource usage and error conditions directly to their impact on business processes. Read more
If someone makes unauthorized changes to SQL Server configuration settings, it could compromise the availability, performance or security of your servers. Using using Extended Events, and a custom metric, in SQL Monitor, Phil Factor offers a way to get an immediate notification of such changes, and investigate their cause. Read more
Phil Factor shows how to monitor for the errors indicative of a possible SQL Injection attack on one of your SQL Server databases, using a SQL Monitor custom metric that uses diagnostic data from Extended Events. Read more
Grant Fritchey explains how a modern monitoring tool must adapt, as our SQL Server databases grow in number and size, and migrate onto new cloud-based, containerized or virtual machine-based SQL Servers. Read more