What does the future of monitoring look like?

TheFutureOfMonitoring — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:37:00 GMT

We recently announced that we'd like to to talk to you about version 2 of our SQL Response alerting and monitoring tool. After all, you know best what you want to see in your ideal monitoring software, and we want to build a tool to your requirements. So we asked you to tell us what you wanted from a monitoring tool, to comment on our designs, and to send us your rough sketches of what you'd like to see on your ideal dashboard. We boldly called our project 'The Future of Monitoring' and the input we've received has matched our aspirations.

We've had four fantastic entries to our 'Design a Dashboard' prize draw. The idea here is that we want to know what you need to see on your dashboard, but without requiring you to send a polished design. Winners will be chosen via a prize draw rather than on artistic merit. What we didn't expect then, was the first entry to be a fully functioning .NET application! Not deterred by this, it was followed by three more entries that prove the future of monitoring might look like anything from a Galileo Thermometer to an arcade game!

What have been equally thought provoking are the comments we've had from various readers of the blog. Just as the dashboards have given us insight into the high-level layouts, the level of detail in the comments has allowed us to define the precise metrics we need to display, from the global overview, through to the drill-down on Disk Counters.

We very much appreciate the contributions and look forward to handing out some prizes in November. In the meantime, we'll be talking to the many people who continue to sign up for our usability sessions, and we'll keep posting updates on The Future of Monitoring blog. And don't forget, it's not too late to enter our Design a Dashboard prize draw!

We look forward to seeing you on The Future of Monitoring.

We'd like to talk to you about SQL Response version 2

TheFutureOfMonitoring — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:20:00 GMT

Actually, we'd rather listen. We're keen to hear your views (and see your ideas!) about what you'd like from SQL Response version 2.

About SQL Response
SQL Response is Red Gate's SQL Server monitoring and alerting tool. Version 1 was released last year, with a very clear purpose, and what we hoped was a distinctive philosophy – "no-nonsense monitoring".

This translated into a tool that was designed to alert you when bad things happened anywhere on your system. SQL Response enabled you to set up customizable alerts for a whole range of typical issues, so that alerts were triggered and useful diagnostic information captured whenever those issues occurred. No alerts? System happy.

We want to build on the success of version 1 of SQL Response by adding the missing dimension. While alerting is a useful weapon in your DBA armoury, some of you prefer to use alerts alongside, not instead of, real-time monitoring. You like to check your servers regularly, regardless of any triggered alerts. You want to glance at your critical instances and check that everything is running smoothly.

So, in version 2 of SQL Response, we're tackling the real-time monitoring issue head-on. We're adding up-to-the-second overviews of your server hardware, and your SQL Server instances, full of useful data that you want to see. Basically, we're talking about a system dashboard. The system dashboard is something that many users of Response v1 have been asking for, and we've got the message.

What does Red Gate want from me?
You're a DBA or a developer or someone who has to look after SQL Servers, so you know best what kind of data you want to see. You also have an opinion on how this information should be presented to you. Maybe you've seen a few tools out there that do some things well. Maybe you've tried a particular piece of monitoring software and found it hard to use, or telling you the wrong things. Whatever your experience is, and whatever your views are, we want to hear from you, so we can develop a tool that meets your requirements.

For that reason, we've set up a dedicated website, specifically for the purpose of talking to you about SQL Response v2, and what should go in it.

We've called this website The Future of Monitoring. Because that's what we hope SQL Response v2 will be when we finish it.

You can do loads of things on this site:
- submit a design for your ideal monitoring dashboard (and win a prize)
- review our designs so far for Response v2 and tell us what you think
- comment on other people's ideal dashboards
- read about the latest development news from the SQL Response team

We look forward to seeing you on The Future of Monitoring.