Effectively Manage Changes and Configurations on Your SQL Server

Setting a Baseline

Setting a baseline is a very important configuration. All the output will depend on this baseline. After doing all the configurations, you should set a baseline by right clicking the server and selecting Establish baseline.

Setting Schedule for Data Gathering

The data gathering frequency can be setup during installation. However, you can configure this at a later stage. As you can see in the screen shot below, data gathering can be done a maximum of once per day. As specified earlier, a scheduled Windows task is created from this page. You can set this at off peak time, so your live server operations will not be overloaded.

Using the SQLconfig Management Console

SQLconfig uses the MMC. For each registered server, configuration is divided into two parts: SQL configurations and Non-SQL configurations. Each configuration will have both a current configuration and a baseline configuration. Current events can also be viewed from the event node.

As the name indicates, an SQL configuration is all the hardware configurations and SQL schema objects in the registered SQL Server.

The following screen shot shows example SQL configurations. Each of the configurations has its own category, so you can order them by category for a better view.

Clicking on a configuration allows you to view the details, which are in HTML format. Since they are in HTML format, you can send them to other locations when needed.

Non-SQL configurations are hardware configurations like Installed hotfixes, operating system version information, and other installed software. Monitoring these is also important. A list of examples for non-SQL configurations is shown below.

An important leaf of this tool is the events node, which shows the changes that have occurred on a SQL Server.

DBAs can view the configuration changes that have occurred on a server. After accepting a change, the DBA is responsible for the event. Otherwise, a change can be reverted.

Does It Put an Unbearable Performance Drag on SQL Server Databases?

No. This tool adds a new database but does not add any triggers to other databases.

Does It Fill a Practical Need of the Average DBA?

Yes, it does so very well. Most of the time server configurations are changed when an issue occurs. This tool will give you important information about those changes.

Recommendation

SQLconfig meets all of its stated objectives. I highly recommended it as an effective monitoring tool. Download a copy from Idera's Web site and try it out yourself.