SQL Server Agnostic Tuning Pack for Easy Tune Launched
Remember that old commercial from the eighties of the actor Chris Robinson saying "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV"? (Yes, I know it's an old commercial, but the catchphrase has definitely outshone the original product placement.) Well, I would like to start this blog post by changing things up and saying that "I'm not a Database Administrator, but I like to play one on TV!" Or, um, well, at least I like to pretend to be a DBA. Sometimes. Okay, not really, but it sounded like a good opening in my head. Making matter worse, if you check out Shmoop's, they recommend that use of this catchphrase should be avoided. Um, whoops?
In any case, when I was working for Purdue University, I put together an Easy Tune tuning pack for the SQL Server agnostic management for SCOM that I thought might be worth sharing.
What is Easy Tune
Bruce Cullen (Director of Products at Cookdown) said it all when he wrote:
https://go.cookdown.com/ezy – if you use SCOM you will have had alert tuning pain in the past.. no longer. Easy Tune is a free SCOM alert tuning solution from us good folk here at Cookdown. Go check it out!
Why Easy Tune
So, why Easy Tune? If you are a SCOM administrator, then you also know the pain associated with importing and tuning a new management pack. Either you become the expert for whatever pack you are importing, or the users you are working with ask a TON of questions about things that they should probably already know the answer for. You provide them the documentation. You meet with them and answer their questions. But they still come back to you asking you those two familiar questions: "What does this pack monitor?" and "What should we do next?" Those two questions alone can drive anyone any crazy...
With Easy Tune, you can quickly dump a list of what a pack (or packs) are monitoring, and then quickly turn on (or turn off) everything in a couple swift clicks. And if you find yourself doing an upgrade to SCOM with a Side-by-Side migration or you are importing a new Management Pack, do yourself a favor and check out Easy Tune and say hello to your new easy button!
Tuning Levels
As I mentioned above, I'm not a SQL Server Administrator. However, I have worked with several exceptional SQL Server Database Administrators and based on those conversations I put together some basic tuning levels for the SQL Server Agnostic management pack that should provide you with a starting point. And since Easy Tune makes it a simple process to tune a management pack with just a few clicks, this should give SCOM Administrators a quick template to work with!
There are four different tuning levels in the pack.
Test
This level presents a very minimal level of monitoring that could be used for your "Test" SQL Servers. There is just enough monitoring to make sure that the database is running, but almost everything else is turning off. Performance metrics are set to a 15 minute collection interval.
Why would use this tuning level?
In cases where you provide a SQL Server to a developer, but you really don't care how it's performing.
QA
The QA level is very similar to the "Test" level, but there are a few more monitors turned on and the performance collections are set to a 10 minute interval.
Why would use this tuning level?
This level should be where the SQL Admin and the SCOM Admin meet to discuss what is important for those databases that are not in production, but demand more monitoring than a "test" server. Basically, this is your middle ground for monitoring and should be tweaked for your specific situation.
Production
This level has most of the monitors turned on and the performance collections are tuned to the 5 minute interval.
Why would use this tuning level?
This is for your servers that are "Production Level" servers. These are the servers that have been tuned and when something goes wrong, you want to know about it immediately. And since the performance counters are collected every 5 minutes, you can look at trends to make sure things have been working like they should be.
Performance Monitoring
This is similar to the Production tuning level, but all of the performance collections are set to the 2 minute interval.
Why would use this tuning level?
This is handy when you want a (closer to) real-time view of the system. Keep in mind that running this profile on more than a few SQL Servers could have a performance impact for both the SQL Server being monitored and your SCOM landscape. Enable this level with caution!!! This profile is also handy when you turn off a lot of the monitors, but ramp up the performance counter collections so that you can tune SQL Server.
What's Next?
In my travels, I've noticed that almost all SCOM landscapes are similar, but that the devil is always in the details. This tuning pack may or may not satisfy your requirements. There could be a monitor that isn't turned on that you think should be. The performance collections could be set to run far too infrequent. You might just absolutely hate what I've done and think that there is a better way. Whatever your opinion, I would be interested to hear what you liked or didn't like about this tuning pack. You can find me in the SquaredUp Community Answers forums, the Slack Community channel or via email at shawn.williams@squaredup.com.