Performance Monitoring Software

I am looking for a good solution for monitoring the performance on my SQL Server. I've used Performance Monitor but think there are better solutions out there. Specifically, I'd like to run the app on my desktop to monitor the server remotely. I'd like the app to run constantly and notify me if anything weird starts to happen.

I'm looking at i3 for SQL Server by Veritas as an option, but it's gonna cost ~$2k.

Anybody have comments, suggestions with the Veritas product or any other packages out there you would recommend.

Thanks,

AlexI'm probably gonna get killed for saying this, but have you looked at writing your own WMI Scripts?

I monitor about 30 machines (20 of them database servers) using a single WMI script that writes to a database. The script is scheduled from a separate server (configured as my SAN management station). It monitors CPU utilization, disk utilization (space and IO), does an inventory of installed applications and provides other information regarding the servers (network configuration, bios revision, RAM size, last time booted and OS version). I had to write some additional stuff to check the event logs and services. Also, I had to write some DTS packages to check on databases and SQL Agent job histories. You could probably check these items with WMI or DSO.

Check out ScriptingAnswers.com or google for computer_inventory.mdb. I snagged a good bit of the code from there and adapted it for our needs and requirements. I'd post what I have, but since so much of it is cobbled together from other sources, I'm not sure how much of it is really "mine" to share.

Once the data is in a central database, it's fairly easy to write reports/asp pages to graphically display the information. It's also easy to configure an e-mail utility to dispatch a notice if anything is weird.

The best part of writing your own scripts is you get a better feel for the guts of your database servers.

Regards,

hmscott|||Oh, I should also probably mention SQL Health and History SQLH2 from Microsoft. I've never installed it, never used it, never seen it. But it is free.

Do a google on SQLH2

Regards,

hmscottsql