Monitor SQL Server 2014 for Proactive Management and Minimal Downtime

Any SQL Server engineer worth their weight in salt would love to be able to receive notifications for potential problems. In most cases, SQL Server databases are critical to business operation and when the database becomes unavailable due to corruption, bad queries, or network errors, it's a monumental (and stressful) event.

I'm not sure how many here at SQL Server Pro are familiar, but Microsoft provides strong management capabilities through its System Center suite of products. In particular, System Center Operations Manager is architected to monitor the entire environment through carefully constructed Management Packs. For each component you want to monitor and report on, there's usually an applicable Management Pack that simply needs to be installed and configured.

Microsoft has now released an updated Management Pack specifically for SQL Server 2014. This Management Pack enables the discovery and monitoring of SQL Server 2014 Database Engines, Databases, SQL Server Agents and other related components, including AlwaysOn, OLTP, and Mirroring.

You can grab this new Management Pack here: System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2014

If you also need to monitor earlier versions of SQL Server, a Management Pack is available for SQL Server 2005-2012 here: System Center Management Pack for SQL Server