Toad Cross Country Vacation
Woohoo! Just got word that my boss approved my January vacation and now I’ll get the opportunity to check several items off my bucket list as I hop across country to the Quest Database Fed Forum in D...
How to Avoid Extinction in the Database Evolution
Friends. Change is here. All of us DBAs are dealing with it. Look at the number of new database platforms. It’s relentless. They just keep coming. And we’re expected to take on any or all of them that...
Customer Conversation: Diagnose SQL Server Instances in an Availability Group
I recently spoke to a user of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise who wanted to be able to drill into the individual SQL Server instances that are participating in an Availability Group. The customer h...
Foglight for SQL Server: Back to Basics – Diagnosing Blocking
I've done a number of posts recently that touch on Foglight administration, customization, or some of the more advanced capabilities of the product. I felt it was a good time to circle back on some o...
Integrate Foglight by Sending SNMP Traps
Many customers ask how they might integrate Foglight Alarms into other 3rd party monitoring tools. One way to accomplish this is to send SNMP traps in response to a Foglight alarm. To configure Fog...
Toad and Foglight in harmony – The PL/SQL Profiler
My favourite feature in Toad has always been the PL/SQL Profiler. I love the way it can profile your code executions is integrated with the editor. It is such an easy and visual feature to use. So if ...
You’re Fired! Wait, What has Fired?
Foglight has many out of the box rules to evaluate performance and availability conditions for your databases, virtual and physical infrastructure, web pages, network devices, etc. Once it has been ru...
Checking When DBCC CheckDB Last Checked Your DB
I had a customer ask how they could use Foglight to find out when "dbcc checkdb" last ran against their SQL Server databases. This is a great use case for User-Defined Collections! As a refresher, my ...
The Juggling Act of Modern DBAs
Database performance monitoring can be a real circus! And with an ever-growing amount of technology platforms to manage, we’ve become the ultimate jugglers. Didn’t sign up to be a clown? Hey, I know...
Foglight for SQL Server – Custom Dashboards using Views
While on the Quest stand at the recent SQL Pass summit in Seattle I was talking to a customer about custom dashboards. You can find more information on custom dashboards here: https://www.quest.com/co...
Be Doubly Selective with Two Foglight Report Parameterized Inputs: SQL Server Instance and Databases
Foglight reports can be extremely useful in broadening the reach of whatever monitoring you’ve got set up. Reports can be the mechanism for delivering PDF or Excel summaries of important information...
Foglight for Databases Quick Tip – Rules and Alerts for Baseline Deviation
For those of you that have been using Foglight for some time may have seen how the solution not only captures and retains metric data historically, but also applies baselines to estimate the system pe...