I recently got an update from the SQL Monitor PM on the progress we’ve made across all the teams. We have a number focusing on different aspects of the product, and they’ve built an impressive produce over the years. I remember when it was SQL Response and only provided alerting. Now it’s an Enterprise Monitoring solution for SQL Server.
One of the additions that was added across the last few months is tagging. Traditionally the monitored instances and databases are organized in categories, which is OK, but very limited. Below you can see at monitor.red-gate.com that we have instances in various categories: production, azure database, staging, test, and simulation.
Tagging is a much more flexible structure that makes it easy to classify and filter your estate. There are plenty of cases where you might not only have an instance set as Production, but perhaps it’s a US or UK server and you want to know the geography. Maybe there is a need to know this instance also relates to CRM v a data warehouse system. Tagging makes that easy.
Filtering with Tags
At the top of the global dashboard shown above, there is a new filtering area where we can filter by tags. You can see below that I’ve filtered the 28 instances in our demo setup to the 2 that have the “sqlservercentral” tag.
What’s more, clicking in the tag box shows me the existing tags that are applied.
Tagging is also available on the Estate tabs.
There are a few other places, and it’s slowly making its way across the product to all areas. You’ll see it slowly appear in other places as well.
Adding Tags
You can add these in the Server Configuration, which works fine. Pick a server and then you can add tags that correspond to what you care about.
If I’m working with a server in the overview, I can also expand the right Alerts panel and in the top About section, I can adjust tags. A good way to fix these up as you work on issues.
Look for tagging to make it’s way into the PowerShell cmdlets as well.
There’s a post on the Redgate Blog about tagging as well. They are looking for feedback, so please send it along.
If you haven’t used SQL Monitor, it’s a great tool to help you keep an eye on your estate with minimal effort. You can get alerted of issues and even integrate with other tools. Download an eval and give it a try today.;
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