Microsoft SQL Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007

Brief Description

The Microsoft SQL Server Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 provides discovery and monitoring of SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008.

Overview

The SQL Server Management Pack provides the capabilities for Operations Manager 2007 to discover SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 installations and components and to monitor them, primarily from the perspective of availability and performance. The availability and performance monitoring is done using a combination of scripts and native Operations Manager capabilities.

Important Pre-Requisite Notes:
Clusters: In order to ensure that all monitoring works correctly for clustered instances of SQL Server ensure that your OpsMgr agents on the physical nodes of the cluster are running either OpsMgr 2007 R2 or OpsMgr 2007 SP1 with the patch installed from KB959865.

SQL-DMO: Scripts in the SQL Server 2008 management pack rely on SQL Data Management Objects (SQL-DMO) to query information from the SQL Server. SQL-DMO is now deprecated and is not shipped as a part of SQL Server 2008. Every system with SQL Server 2008 that will be monitored must have SQL-DMO installed from the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components. For instructions on how to download and install the SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components refer to the management pack guide.

Feature Bullet Summary:
The following list gives an overview of the features of the SQL Server management pack. Refer to the SQL Server management pack guide for more detail.

Support for Enterprise, Standard and Express editions of SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008 and 32bit, 64bit and ia64 architectures.
Support for both simple and complex SQL configurations such as clustered installations, multiple instances and 32bit roles running on a 64bit OS. For full details on supported configurations refer to the guide included with the management pack.
Discovery and monitoring of SQL Server roles such as DB Engine, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Integrations Services.
Discovery of SQL components such as databases, the SQL Agent and SQL jobs.
Over 20 views covering areas such as database free space, SQL related performance, SQL related alerts, and lists of the various SQL roles and components which are discovered and their related state.
Reports for longer-term analysis of common problem areas related to SQL Server such as SQL Server lock analysis and top deadlocked databases, SQL Server service pack levels across discovered roles, user connection activity. Likewise the generic reports from the Microsoft Generic Report Library can be used against the roles and components discovered by the SQL MPs to review availability and performance across many systems and over longer periods of time.
Role and component specific tasks which provide access to common tools, triage information, or corrective actions without needing to leave the Operations Console in most cases.
Monitoring of databases covers database status, database free space, log shipping monitoring for both the source and destination, and transaction log free space.
Monitoring of key SQL related services.
Monitoring for persistent SPID blocking.
Monitoring of numerous SQL events and performance data points. Alerts bring the issue to your attention and provide knowledge on the impact and possible resolutions.

Release History:

7/22/2009 - Updated version 6.0.6648.0, which fixes an issue with some monitoring not working on clustered instances of SQL Server. Refer to the MP guide for more details.
3/31/2009 - Updated version 6.0.6569.0, which provided a number of fixes. Refer to the MP guide for more details.
12/3/2008 - Updated version 6.0.6460.0, fixed an issue with the database discovery script to prevent overflows
10/29/2008 - Updated version 6.0.6441.0, which introduced SQL Server 2008 support in addition to other new features and fixes. Refer to the MP guide for a complete list of changes.
3/31/2008 - Updated version 6.0.6278.8
12/21/2007 - updated version 6.0.6247.5
3/23/2007 - Initial Release, version 6.0.5000.0

Top of page

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Server; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008

Other Software:

System Center Operations Manager 2007
SQL Server

Clusters: In order to ensure that all monitoring works correctly for clustered instances of SQL Server ensure that your OpsMgr agents on the physical nodes of the cluster are running either OpsMgr 2007 R2 or OpsMgr 2007 SP1 with the patch installed from KB959865.

SQL-DMO: Scripts in the SQL Server 2008 management pack rely on SQL Data Management Objects (SQL-DMO) to query information from the SQL Server. SQL-DMO is now deprecated and is not shipped as a part of SQL Server 2008. Every system with SQL Server 2008 that will be monitored must have SQL-DMO installed from the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components. For instructions on how to download and install the SQL Server 2005 Backward Compatibility Components refer to the management pack guide.

In general, the supported configurations are outlined in the following locations:

This MP is designed to monitor the SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008 in the following configuration:

32-bit SQL Server on 32-bit operating system,
64-bit SQL Server on 64-bit operating system. For SQL Server 2005, only SP2 or later is supported
32-bit SQL Server on 64-bit operating system. SQL Server 2000 is NOT supported

Only a subset of monitoring will work for 32-bit installations of SQL Server that are monitored on a 64-bit operating system. Please see MP guide and Knowledge Base article 891238 for detail.

Important: Important Pre-Requisite Notes:
To monitor SQL Server 2008, you must install SQL-DMO. For more information, see “Configuration for Monitoring SQL Server 2008 Systems” in the management pack guide.

For each version of SQL Server, the following editions are supported (when they apply):

Enterprise
Developer
Standard
Express

The SQL Server management packs also provide monitoring for clustered installations of all SQL roles that can be installed on a cluster. The following limitations apply to support for monitoring clustered installations:

Installations of SQL Server on cluster quorum drives are not supported, and this configuration is not suggested, as documented in Knowledge Base article 280345.
Having a SQL Server cluster resource group that contains more than one network name resource can result in that clustered SQL Server resource not being monitored. As stated in Knowledge Base article 919594, “If more than one Network Name resource is configured in a group, System Center Operations Manager or MOM uses the first network name that it detects as the name of the virtual server.”

For detailed instructions on setup, configuration and monitoring of clustered SQL Server resources, see “Configuration for Monitoring Clustered Resources” in the management pack guide.

Note: As of the October release of the SQL Server Management Pack package, agentless monitoring is no longer supported and will not function in most cases. This change was made to allow full support of monitoring for clustered resources.

Top of page

Instructions

Refer to the management pack guide included in this download for detailed instructions on working with this management pack. For the latest MP Guide, please download the .doc file below.

Top of page