Product Overview
Let us now examine the key features of SQL Sentry Event Manager that will enable you to improve your day-to-day database administrative work.
The following screen shot shoes the very first window that you will see in this wonderful tool.
There are three main sections in the SQL Sentry console: Tree view, Calendar view, and Alert configuration.
Tree View
Tree view shows all the SQL Servers that you need to monitor in a familiar manner. From this section you can directly access the SQL Servers you want. In addition, you can register any Oracle Servers available. This is a new feature in Event Manager 3.0. Because of this new feature, you have the luxury of managing SQL Servers and Oracle Servers from one console, which gives you a more effective way of monitoring the performance of your Servers.
Scheduled jobs are not the only concern that DBAs have. With Event Manager you can view and monitor Windows scheduler as well. This gives you the big picture about scheduling all the events on the server.
You have the option of adding performance counters to these tasks and monitoring them from the tool itself.
Calendar View
This is the most fascinating feature available in Event Manager. As a DBA, the first thing you do in your database environment is check the jobs that ran the previous day. Just imagine the trouble this can cause in multi-server environments. You’ll have no choice but to log on to each SQL server and check it manually. Things become more frustrating when your servers are located around the globe and if you have Oracle servers.
This view will relieve your frustration. The calendar will identify all failed jobs—just double-click it to identify the error. Moreover, you can disable the job here if needed. Narrow your view down to an individual server by selecting a server in tree view. You can select a particular date to view or even view your calendar in 1-minute, 10-minute, 1-hour, and 3-hour time intervals.
From calendar view, you can visualize all the jobs on all the servers in your enterprise at once, which help you uncover conflicts; for example, when you have two databases on different servers backing up to one device at the same time. You would not notice the load unless you were using Event Manager. You can reschedule a job without having to log on to SQL Server by just dragging and dropping it to the necessary time slots on the calendar.