Externally Monitoring the Microsoft SQL Database Server

Previously, we elaborately discussed about the wide variety of internal metrics that the eG agent collects from the Microsoft SQL database server, and how these metrics impact the internal health of the server. However, some administrators might not have access to Microsoft SQL Database servers in their environment, and might hence be unable to install agents on them. These administrators might still want to monitor external health indicators such as the availability and responsiveness of the Microsoft SQL Database server. In order to enable administrators to collect such external metrics in a non-intrusive manner, eG Enterprise offers the External Microsoft SQL model (see Figure 1). To use this model, only a single eG external agent is required; this agent sits on a remote host and determines the health of the target Microsoft SQL Database server from an external perspective.

Figure 1 : Layer model of the External Microsoft SQL server

The Network test associated with the Network layer runs network-level pings to check whether the Microsoft SQL Database server can be accessed over the network. Besides, the test also looks out for abnormal/very high packet loss, undue network delays, etc. To know more about the Network test, refer to the Monitoring Unix and Windows Servers document. The MS SQL Service layer is mapped to an SQL Network test, which emulates a query to the Microsoft SQL Database server from an external location, to determine the availability of the Microsoft SQL Database server and the speed with which it executes the query. For more details on this test, refer to SQL Network Test.