We keep adding stuff to Redgate Monitor, and it’s easy to miss some of the improvements. Here’s one that’s been around quite awhile, but while discussing the product with a customer who uses Redgate Monitor, I realized they weren’t aware of this.
I was looking at a set of queries on the SSC servers with an SE and a customer. The SE pointed out that we surface some code issues on this page. There’s a blue lightbulb next to one of the queries.
I’ve zoomed in, but if you go to monitor.red-gate.com, you’ll find this somewhere in the list. This is to the right, where the database name is listed.
If we expand this query from the left side (the arrow), we see details, but below the plan handle, we’ve noted that Redgate Monitor has run code analysis and identified an issue. In this case, there’s one issue, but I’ve seen 3 or 4 on some client systems.
We can click the blue text above (1 issues with this query) and this opens a dialog where I can see the query and the code analysis issue identified. In this case, we don’t have a schema name in here, which is just poor practice and a potential place you could have issues, if you add schemas and users might have a different default.
One cool thing, is that if I click the slide in the upper right, I get a better format for the code.
Our code analysis rules are documented on our side, and there is a link at the bottom of the dialog that popped up. It’s to the lower right, and I cropped it out to get a slightly better image. If does to the Code Analysis pages at documentation.red-gate.com. Here you can read about our code smells and rules, which are also checked by SQL Prompt.
Summary
This is a small thing, but it helps with Operations people who might want to suggest ways that code could be improved, whether to clean up the codebase or for better performance. Once you start to establish guidance, and provide useful solutions, you can collaborate and other changes are possible.
If you use Redgate Monitor, look for these items and see if you can encourage some refactoring from developers.
Redgate Monitor is a world-class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.
I have been experimenting with MCP servers in a few ways, including the Redgate Monitor MCP Server. It took me a few tries, and some help from engineers to get connected. I’ll cover how I did this in Claude and Visual Studio Code in this post, and try to warn you about a few places I made mistakes.
I’m not going to bore you with the setup and configuration of the Redgate Monitor instance. That procedure might change by release, so I’ll assume you’ve got the MCP server enabled.
To access the MCP server, you need to give your AI agent a token. This authorizes the MCP server to connect to Redgate Monitor and read data. These are read only tokens, and designed for the MCP and the tools that are available.
In the configuration, there is an Access Tokens area. Click here.
Click Create Token on the next screen. This is in the upper right.
On the next screen, give your token a name, description, and set an expiration date. The default is one year.
Make sure you select the MCP type. I messed this up the first time.
Below this, pick the servers the MCP token can access. I’ve selected just the Production serer group, but you can set this as needed. I’d make sure the name and/or description lets you know what can be accessed.
You will get a review screen, to verify what you’ve done. Accept that and you’ll get a dialog with the token value. Make sure you save this securely somewhere.
Once you’ve created this, it’s in a list, and you can click the “view details, which shows you what the token can access, as you can see below. You cannot get the token itself anymore.
Configuring VS Code
I’m going to show this working in VS Code. I opened the Command Palette and selected the MCP: Open User Configuration, as shown.
Inside the config, I pasted this inside the “servers” key. This should be a sub element, and this goes alongside any other MCP servers.:
The save this. When you start the MCP server, it will ask you for your token. Paste the value in and then you should connect. You do this from the MCP: List Servers item in the command palette. This should give you output like this, with a connection message and tools discovered:
If I open a chat, and add the MCP as a tool, I can ask questions. Here’s a question I asked and the initial responses from the LLM.
Once this is done, I’ll get a list of the alerts. I did approve some PoSh commands where the LLM stored results from Redgate monitor and then tried to process those after writing them to a temp file.
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This is the raw LLM trying to use tools and fumbling around. With a few skills and guidance, this will run smoother, quicker, and more efficiently in your environment.
Summary
The Redgate Monitor MCP server is a great way to start using AI to analyze all the data in your database estate that Redgate Monitor collects. There were 7 tools when I started, but within a few weeks there were 11. By the time you read this, there are likely going to be even more.
Give Redgate Monitor a try and learn how to use MCP servers to link your LLM to Redgate Monitor and start analyzing systems in a more natural manner.
Redgate Monitor is a world-class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.
I have been experimenting with MCP servers in a few ways, and pressing on our Redgate Monitor team to add one to their system. They did, started adding tools, and are continuing to work. I’m excited.
Here’s a quick look at the MCP server for Redgate Monitor (preview in July 2026).
I’m not going to bore you with the setup and configuration. You do need to be on a 14.23 or later as the version. Your account rep can get you setup instructions, which are still be worked on and finalized. This is really a work in progress as of this writing (Jul 30) and I’ve found a few things that didn’t quite make sense, so be patient. This is editing the Monitor Webserver config file and enabling this.
Once that’s done, it’s a little tricky with an AI agent system. This is the high level, and I’ll do some more detailed notes about getting this in VSCode and Claude, where I work. The basic steps are:
Enable in Redgate Monitor
Create an MCP Access token
Add the MCP config to your Agent setup
It’s not quite as simple as it sounded to me, but it wasn’t that hard. It’s mostly working through some of the steps and ensuring you get your JSON correct.
Accessing the MCP Server
I connected with Claude for the demo in the Video Walkthrough below, but I’ll give you a quick look here. I set my token for the prod/staging/dev systems. When I look at the test instance of Redgate Monitor, I see this: lots of servers and alerts.
Once the MCP server is added, I start Claude and run a /mcp. I see my server get connected.
There are a number of tools, which have grown since I started testing. I don’t have a complete list and anything I put here will be out of date in a week, so I won’t bother. In any case, I’ll ask for the production servers. I can see the various base monitors being queried. This is slower than almost any customer, since we have more BMs than most people here. Most have 1-2 at most.
Note: I did get asked for permission a few times before the tools were accessed. Since all MCP stuff is read-only now, I just granted permission for all sessions.
Here are the results. Note the summary at the bottom.
I next asked this: which servers are in critical status and why. The Claude LLM interprets this and starts querying the Redgate Monitor server, using the token for security, and the tools, which are really the API of things that can be run.
The results I got were what you see below. The LLM had to run a bunch of queries to get results and the read in those results and interpret them. In this case, there were a lot of different queries of tools to look for data. This probably took a minute or two, but it feels long while watching the screen.
I next asked about queries on an instance. I don’t know these servers that well, but I know there are workloads on some to simulate what clients see. I decided to ask about one of the 2019 instances in production. In this case, I got asked for permission for a new tool (I hadn’t run the top queries tool) and then the agent went to work. You can see the tool usage and results. In this case, the system was down when I ran this, and it let me know this was from before the outage.
At the bottom, there are some observations, which can be useful. I’ve got cursors running, XEvents, etc. Helpful to look at this for a system I don’t spend a lot of time examining.
Ultimately the MCP server is a way for you to use tools you use already, but allow them to query the data in Redgate Monitor.
I’m excited to see where this can go, and how it can help customers interpret all the data collected by Redgate Monitor and more easily summarize it. This will be useful to some, though others of you might not like MCP access and instead stick with the internal AI tools.
It’s up to you, but we are giving you the choice to work as you wish.
Summary
The Redgate Monitor MCP server is in preview as of July 2026. I tried to give you a short sense of how you can use this to query Redgate Monitor and keep an eye on your systems. There are lots of ways to work, and I’ll try to give some guidance on specific things over time, but for now this gives you a sense of how MCP works.
I’ll do future posts that cover the config and help you get testing in your own environment.
Redgate Monitor continues to grow and advance and MCP capabilities are a great way to start using AI to help manage a large database estate, with your own AI resources.
Redgate Monitor is a world-class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.
One of the things I’ve been requesting for a number of years is cost information. I could see this coming in 2015 with the move to the cloud and need to justify the resources provisioned along with sizes. Doing that effectively needs cost information.
Redgate Monitor has added a bit of cost information, and the virtual machine section in the Estate tab contains this. This post looks at what is available (as of June 2026).
When I first started managing VMs and moving database loads to them, one of the things that I was concerned about was the CPU and RAM usage. CFOs and lots of admins wanted these are 100% to get the most out of their investments.
I wanted something less to prevent my phone from ringing constantly.
When you pick select the Estate tab, you see a number of items, but since v143.0.2906, there is a Virtual Machines item.
If you select that, then you see all your virtual machines, along with the resource name, group, and various metrics. This is a quick overview of what’s running.
If you look at the list, some are local and some are in the cloud. In addition, to the right, I see the metrics that help me understand average usage in a few ways: CPU, memory, storage allocated and used, and costs.
There aren’t any costs above as we filter that on the demo site, but if you provide cloud credentials, we use this to get some cost information. Here’s a shot from the doc site, which shows the costs in local currency (pounds Sterling for RG) and USD, which helps normalize the costs. You can read more about this on the doc page.
If you select a machine, a blade slides out with more details on usage. Here you can see the primary SSC server. This helps me decide if this is over or under provisioned based on data. I see CPU usage across a month, along with memory and storage (not shown).
If I click the “compare with” toggle, I see the last two months overlaid, which is useful info. This helps me decide if last month was normal or an outlier. It does seem like June was a busier month than May, which is good. My boss likes busier.
As far as data, I have choices for the period, going from the last day to 6 months.
It’s up to me to keep this data, and I have an entry as well in the Data Retention settings for this data.
There’s more coming, and I know there are plans to add PaaS data as well, but if there are things you’re interested in, please contact your account rep and let them know what needs you have and why. I think this is an important aspect of monitoring that will grow over time.
Summary
This post showed the first slice of work on costing information, with an emphasis on virtual machines. There is performance as well as cost data, so you can evaluate whether you are appropriately sized for your systems.
I’m looking forward to more information, including custom costs being added for on-premises machines, as well as PaaS services.
Redgate Monitor is a world-class monitoring solution for your database estate. Download a trial today and see how it can help you manage your estate more efficiently.
We can click the blue text above (1 issues with this query) and this opens a dialog where I can see the query and the code analysis issue identified. In this case, we don’t have a schema name in here, which is just poor practice and a potential place you could have issues, if you add schemas and users might have a different default.
