Review of Spotlight on SQL Server - Dell SQL Server Processes

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Spotlight on SQL Server Granting Vacations to
SQL DBAs Everywhere Dave Pinal SQL
Server Professional Profuse SQL Writer
SQL Server DBA Professionals
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This review is based on the SQL Server
performance monitoring tool Spotlight on SQL
Server. 
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No vacation for you

• A few days ago I was visiting a large Database
  Shop and I happened to meet quite a few DBAs
  there.
• After sharing a quick story of my vacation, I
  asked the DBAs around me about their own
  vacation.
• To my surprise many of the DBA's have not taken a
  holiday for quite a some time.
• Why? The answer was simple. Due to my job.

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Excuses

• Forget about days off, almost every other night
  I have to wake up to fix something on my server,
  I do not remember when I slept 6 hours without
  waking up to see the server.

I do not want to leave, I do not know the guy
who will manage the server behind me. He may not
know where to look when things go wrong. I am
new in the job and I have lots to learn.
Honestly, when something goes wrong, I have no
clue where to look so I take lots of time to
figure things out.
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This is not healthy
What I realized is that DBAs do want to take a
break from their work and enjoy time with their
friends and family, however, they are not able to
take breaks. This is not a healthy environment.
You need to have a transparent system where you
know what is going on in your server with a
single glance and ease of access to more
information. Speaking of healthySee if your
database is healthy with our Free Healthcheck
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So I asked
So I asked Which one thing do you think if
you had in your job, would enable you to take a
much needed vacation without any stress or
worry? And they answered We need a single
screen for all of our systems, that shows us
exactly what is going on with our server every
single time. Sometimes there is no out of the
box solution we need to rely on third party
solutions or experts who know exactly what they
are doingenter Spotlight on SQL Server.
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Spotlight on SQL Server

• Here is the home screen of Spotlight on SQL
  Server Enterprise

• You can see in the above image there are many
  sections for various important monitoring areas
  of SQL Server.

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Sessions

• This section demonstrates the various details
  about your sessions like
• How many sessions are open?
• How many different computers are connected?
• How many active sessions there are?
• What is the SQL Server response time?
• The one which attracted my attention was details
  about the response time. 
• This shows the full round-trip response time
  for of a query representative of general workload.

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SQL Processes
This section demonstrates how many total system
and user processes there are. We can also see
blocked processes here as well. The best part
is that we can right click on any area of this
home screen and see further details. I
right-clicked on User Processes and selected
Session Details. It immediately demonstrated the
display of various user sessions and the script
which was running in the session.
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SQL Memory

• This section demonstrates vital information about
  memory, like
• How big is my buffer?
• How much of my cache is being used?
• Procedure cache section we dont often track
  this when we are talking about SQL and Memory.
• Here is the image
• of my computer's
• Cache Size by
• Object Type
• which displays
• various object
• types and size
• taken from my
• memory cache.

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Disk Storage
This section displays IO activities, keeping in
mind database workload. We can see details about
various data files, file groups, database count
and log files, but my favorite section is MAX
IO/Wait which is at the bottom of the section.
We can see various Wait types and upon clicking
details we can see Diagnose I/O Pressure as
well. There are animated movements of packets,
batches, logical reads, checkpoints,etc. If we
want to see any further details we can just
right click and see more details about that
particular object or activity. Here is the best
part anywhere we need focus or alerts,
 Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise will turn
that section to red and will send email alerts.
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Go on vacation

• Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise makes it even
  easier for DBAs to go on vacation and still keep
  an eye on the Servers!

• By using Spotlight Mobile which, by the way is
  FREE, you can
• Monitor the health of you SQL Server environment
  via the Heatmap
• View an alarms list
• Get alarm details
• Have the ability to snooze or acknowledge alarms
• Anywhere, anytime, on any device!

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Download the fully functional 30 day FREE
version and take that much needed vacation!
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