SQL Sentry Event Manager® is the ultimate scheduling, alerting and response system for optimizing schedule performance of database servers across your enterprise. Event Manager provides DBAs with "Outlook-style" visibility and functionality for managing SQL Agent jobs, Windows Tasks, and Oracle jobs in increasingly complex cross-platform environments.
The new Task Scheduler 2.0 in Windows Server 2008/Vista uses tasks more extensively than before. There are over 30 tasks installed on every Windows Server 2008 and there is no easy way to see what that is, without SQL Sentry Event Manager. Read through the details at: Why Watch Task Scheduler Instances?
Event Manager for Windows Task Scheduler does not replace Task Scheduler. In fact, that is a key differentiation between Event Manager and most other scheduling products. With Event Manager there are no agents to install and manage on each server. Event Manager for Task Scheduler provides a visual display of Windows Tasks along with other events across the enterprise so that the DBA can “see” how they relate to one another and optimize the schedules more efficiently.
SQL Sentry Event Manager Enterprise Edition (EE) for Task Scheduler delivers the tools and productivity necessary to
manage intricate and voluminous Windows task streams including support for geographically distributed deployments
and configuration of powerful cross-server task chains. Event Manager EE for Task Scheduler includes
visual schedule management, schedule performance monitoring, alerting and response actions, graphical reporting, advanced chaining and queuing, and more for Windows tasks. The calendar view provides a clear picture of Windows task schedules via an Outlook-style GUI giving unprecedented visibility and
control over scheduling issues that can impact server performance.
If one finds they do not require the advanced features of Event Manager EE for Task Scheduler, then the
Standard Edition is an excellent starting point.
The Standard Edition can be easily upgraded to the Enterprise Edition if the needs of the organization change. For more detail, view the features comparision matrix.
SQL Sentry Event Manager is licensed per individual monitored instance. First year annual software maintenance
is required and provides technical support via e-mail and phone, fixes and updates and free version upgrades.
Customers can upgrade from Standard to Enterprise edition at any time without having to reinstall. Simply pay
the difference and receive a new license key.
See your complex event schedules in a whole new light with Event Manager's robust, Outlook-style visual calendar with drag-and-drop rescheduling.
The flexible interface allows simultaneous display of multiple calendars and graphs, and supports both full and split screen modes.
Slice and dice schedules across servers with the Global Calendar, Group Calendars, and Custom Event Views.
Easily assess contention levels across shared resources such as file storage areas, tape libraries, and network segments.
No more trying to use "Next Run Date" to divine a server's job schedule! Event Manager's Outlook-style calendar view provides a clear picture of your server event schedules -- giving you unprecedented visibility and control over scheduling issues that can impact server performance. The Event Manager calendar highlights schedule overlap and contention issues, long running events, failed events and more using clear visual indicators. Quickly view historical and future schedule information at a glance, and easily resolve conflicts using drag-and-drop.
Shared Resource Calendars Easily create calendars showing all events or tasks that read or write to a particular SAN or NAS device, or that utilize a certain network segment, for the purpose of leveling the scheduled activity across the resource and thereby reducing contention.
Event History View The event history view provides flexible sorting and grouping capabilities, color-coded status indicators, and full step-level details for multi-step jobs, DTS packages, and SSIS packages.
Multi-Server Features Event Manager fully supports multi-server event administration. Multi-server calendars on Master (MSX) servers enable you to see what's happening across all Target (TSX) servers in one view! The multi-server job history viewer allows you to easily filter by specific Target servers, or view activity across all Target servers together.
Event Manager employs the most comprehensive and reliable notification system available today for SQL Server and Oracle.
Provides a wide variety of response actions to any event status, runtime or performance condition.
You can even generate notifications for Windows Task Scheduler, Reporting Services, and other event sources.
SQL Sentry's Event Manager employs the most comprehensive and reliable cross-platform notification system available today, providing reliable, detailed alerts as well as a variety of other response conditions for various event types. Event Manager is agent-less, fault tolerant, and uses a centralized management system which eliminates the need to touch each server.
Conditions and Actions Event Manager can generate email or pager alerts, and take various other actions using event status, runtime, or performance information.
Event Sources:
• SQL Server Agent Alerts
• SQL Server Agent Jobs
• SQL Server Agent Log
• DTS Packages
• Reporting Services
• SQL Server Maintenance Plans
• Windows Tasks
• Oracle DBMS Jobs
• Oracle Enterprise Manager Jobs
• Oracle 10g Scheduler
Conditions (more than 90) including:
• Start / Finish
• Success / Failure
• Step Failure / Retry
• Runtime Threshold Min / Max
• Blocked / Blocking
• Performance Threshold Min / Max
• Queuing / Queued
• Schedule Conflict
• Output Content Match
Actions:
• Send Email
• Send Page
• Execute Process
• Execute SQL
• Execute Job
• Kill Task
• Log to Disk
• Log to Database
• Log to Event Log
Alert Messages
Event Manager goes beyond the limited alerting capabilities built-in to SQL Server, Oracle, and Windows Task Scheduler with messages that include granular, detail-level information. Event Manager alerts contain more of the information you need to quickly evaluate and resolve any condition, which can dramatically reduce response times.
Supported Alerts:
• Step-level output
• Error codes and descriptions
• Job and performance condition data
• Start / End times
• Job duration
• "Other Active Jobs" list
• Blocking processes, SQL statements,
hostnames and applications
Easily enforce dependencies between SQL Server, Oracle and Windows Scheduler across your environment.
Event Manager is the first system enabling automation and integration across different scheduling systems, ensuring precise control over which events run and when.
Event Manager's advanced chaining features enable you to quickly
and easily define dependencies and workflows involving SQL Agent jobs,
Oracle jobs,
and/or Windows Tasks. You have ultimate flexibility with regard to how
the chains are defined - the chained jobs or tasks can reside anywhere
in the enterprise, and you can have unlimited levels per chain, as well
as unlimited jobs/tasks per level.
Features
Easy configuration of powerful cross-server job chains.
Define dependencies between events occurring on disparate systems. For example, run a SQL Server job whenever a Windows task completes successfully.
Graphical Interface for easy of configuration and printing of chain diagrams.
No limit to length or complexity of chain.
Works with your existing scheduling agents - no new schedulers are installed.
Job Queuing
Event Manager's advanced queuing features make it easy to prevent job
conflicts related to occasional runtime deviations, and enforce
inter-job dependencies. You can set a job to queue or be queued for a
specified time, limit the total number of jobs in the queue at any one
time, and control a job's behavior when it pops off the queue.
The "Execute
Job"
Action
For simpler 1-to-1 chaining scenarios, you can utilize the "Execute
Job" action to trigger a job on any SQL Server in response to any other event status or performance condition, for any event type.
Using a plug-in architecture, Event Manager Enterprise Edition seamlessly integrates event data from SQL Server, Oracle, Windows Scheduler and others together in one console, so you get the full picture.
Event Manager doesn't replace your existing schedulers, it makes them work better.
Event Manager seamlessly integrates external event data into calendars, and gives you unprecedented visibility and control over all of the events that can impact your server performance.
SQL Sentry Event Manager supports SQL Agent jobs, Windows Tasks, and
Oracle jobs in increasingly complex cross-platform environments.
Just as SQL Agent jobs
and Oracle jobs can impact server performance, so can, for example, a Windows Task running a disk defragmentation.
DBAs need to know about those events too since they're using the same CPU, RAM, and disk resources as
the server. Using a plug-in architecture,
Event Manager connector modules allow these popular external systems including backup, defrag, anti-virus, and others to be integrated and easily managed through the
Event Manager Console. Event Manager automatically brings all of these events together and displays them on its unified calendar, so you get the whole picture... not just part of it.
The data collected can then be used to trigger the various actions carried out by
Event Manager such as sending email notifications, executing other jobs or processes, or logging events. This also allows
Event Manager to manage and automate dependencies between different event types and across multiple
servers through chaining.
Link any Windows performance counter directly to an event or custom view and see the impact any combination of events is having on Windows servers or shared resources.
Counters are instantiated as needed for minimal server and network overhead.
Scheduling issues are often one of the biggest "hidden" contributors to
performance degradation, and a lack of reliable notifications only compounds the issue.
Event Manager provides all of the
tools a DBA needs to efficiently manage complex job schedules in order
to minimize schedule contention, resource battles and other performance
problems caused by "unoptimized" schedules. Plus it will reliably
alert you when there are issues requiring attention.
Monitor Schedule Performance
Event Manager makes it simple to link any Windows performance counter directly to any job, task, or report and see exactly what impact it's having on performance throughout its run lifetime. Event Manager automatically enables and disables counters as needed, minimizing server and network overhead.
You can easily link performance counters from different servers to a job, which can be extremely valuable for troubleshooting jobs that do work on multiple servers such as for replication, log shipping, DTS, etc.
Runtime Thresholds
Never again get burned when a job hangs and runs for 5 days instead of 5 minutes, and you're never alerted. Event Manager continuously monitors job and task runtimes and generates alerts based on defined minimum or maximum runtime thresholds, which can be set at the global, server, or job-level. You can easily be alerted whenever any job, task, report, or DTS package in your enterprise runs above or below a certain percentage of its "average" runtime, as well as an explicit threshold such as "1 hour".
Block Detection
Event Manager detects whenever a SQL Agent job is involved in a blocking condition (blocked or blocking), and alerts you with the full SQL statements, host names, and application names in the blocking chain.
Chaining and Queuing
Advanced scheduling features such as event chaining and queuing can help ensure that schedule conflicts and resource contention are prevented, even when runtimes fall outside of the norm. Event Manager is the first system enabling automation and integration across different scheduling systems, ensuring precise control over which events run and when.
See
Monitoring Disk Contention to see how jobs can dramatically impact performance through heavy
contention for disk resources.
Gantt-style performance graphs highlight the events competing for resources and causing end user performance problems.
Event history and other list views can be easily exported to .HTML, .XML, or .CSV format.
Event Manager's event runtime graphs enable quick trend analysis, and Gantt-style performance graphs highlight the events competing for resources and causing end-user performance problems. Event history and other list views can be easily exported to .HTML, .XML, or .CSV format.
Schedule Performance
Event performance graphs clearly illustrate how schedule collisions may be impacting server and database performance. Any Windows performance counters, including any SQL Server counters, can easily be "linked" to a SQL Agent job, Windows task or Reporting Services report, and performance data will be automatically collected whenever the scheduled event runs. Combination Gantt / Bar graphs are used to visually correlate schedule activity and performance data in an easy to read format.
Runtime Graphs
Event runtime graphs provide both historical and aggregate views, making it easy to spot runtime trends that can be an indicator of underlying scheduling and/or resource contention issues. For example, you can see how your nightly backups are trending over the past 3 months to determine if and when they'll fall outside of your desired backup window.
Conflicts Viewer
The conflicts viewer shows all scheduled events on a server with overlapping runtimes, sorted descending by “Total Conflict Time” by default (the total time one event overlaps with all other events). This measure is extremely valuable in determining which events may be causing the most resource contention. You simply double-click any conflict instance to immediately jump to that spot on the calendar, then quickly resolve the conflict using drag-and-drop.
Feature Comparison
With support for SQL Server, Oracle, Window Task Scheduler and Sharepoint platforms, Event Manager has many advanced features. See how the Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition can help you optimize performance.
SQL Sentry Event Manager is licensed per individual monitored instance. First year annual software maintenance
is required and provides technical support via e-mail and phone, fixes and updates and free version upgrades.
Customers can upgrade from Standard to Enterprise edition at any time without having to reinstall. Simply pay
the difference and receive a new license key.
Benefits
Performance Improvement
Make smarter scheduling decisions by seeing and understanding the impact that events have on production resources, and easily eliminate schedule contention via drag-and-drop to ensure applications run at optimal levels.
Lower Database Administration Costs
Event Manager greatly reduces the amount of manual labor required to perform mundane schedule management and troubleshoot performance problems, allowing DBA's to spend more time proactively managing their servers.
Continual Innovation
While other SQL Server monitoring tools have stagnated, SQL Sentry has continued to push the envelope, introducing several industry firsts such as our patent-pending SQL Server disk analysis, unrestricted historical performance reporting, comprehensive deadlock analysis, performance event calendars, intelligent wait analysis, and many more cutting edge features.
Lower Overhead
SQL Sentry’s tools are built to be minimally invasive and incur the lowest possible hit on monitored servers via our agent-less architecture... while other SQL Server monitoring tools incur far more load than they will ever help you to resolve. Some even filter out all of their own query activity so you never see it! Don’t be fooled by misleading claims of lower overhead – install SQL Sentry alongside other tools to see exactly how much of a performance hit they incur. If you’d like to see SQL Sentry’s overhead in a 100-server environment, let us know and we will send you the results of our latest comprehensive benchmark tests.
Lower Cost
SQL Sentry software continually delivers more features, functionality and utility than other SQL Server software tools, at a lower price point. With subscription-based and site licensing options, the relative savings can grow even further.
Higher Quality
SQL Sentry software undergoes intensive regression, scalability and overhead testing in our internal test lab of over 100 SQL Servers. It is then real-world tested in one of the largest SQL Server hosting environments in the U.S., until it is deemed stable enough to release to the public... no matter how long it takes. After release, our integrated, automated exception reporter gives us a perpetual feedback loop with our customers, who are continually surprised to receive a response from a real human usually within hours of submitting an exception.
Scalability
SQL Sentry software is installed in some of the largest SQL Server environments in the world. Our low overhead, agent-less, site-based approach provides almost linear scalability. We have yet to meet a SQL Server environment that the SQL Sentry architecture can’t handle.
World-class Support
SQL Sentry provides the highest level of support services you will find in the SQL Server software world. Our clients continually rave about the responsiveness and technical competence of our support team. You will never speak to a non-technical front-line person that doesn’t understand SQL Server or SQL Sentry software. To the contrary, you will often be speaking directly to a development team member.
Credibility
We are now in our 6th year as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and our customer survey results say it better than we ever could. Our marks across the board are consistently higher than other Microsoft partners. All customers fell into the
"Champion" quadrant, ranking us amongst the top Microsoft ISVs in the world.
Click here for 2009 survey results.
Videos
The videos below provide insight into key software features and concepts.
The SQL Sentry Power Suite provides a complete performance monitoring and optimization solution for Microsoft SQL Server by combining both Performance Advisor for SQL Server and Event Manager.
A brief overview of Event Manager, including the all devices global calendar view. Calendar views are available for any server or group of servers, and can even be customized to show particular types of events across your enterprise in one view.
Event Manager allows you to customize a calendar by choosing any watched server or object from any watched server. In this segment we will take a closer look at filtering calendar views and creating custom event views.
Event Manager's advanced chaining features enable you to quickly and easily define dependencies and workflows involving SQL Agent jobs, Windows Tasks and/or Oracle jobs. Send an email or initiate another automated response based on conditions specific to the entire chain, such as success, failure, or runtime thresholds.
Learn how to restart a chain from any node in case a chain fails, or be alerted on chain conditions like failures or runtime thresholds. Gain complete visibility and control over your complex workflows and ensure they perform exactly as needed in production.
Event Manager employs the most comprehensive and reliable notification system available for SQL Server, providing a wide variety of response actions to any job status, runtime or performance condition.
Pricing
SQL Sentry Event Manager is licensed per individual monitored instance. First year annual software maintenance
is required and provides technical support via e-mail and phone, fixes and updates and free version upgrades.
Event Manager EE License for Windows Task Scheduler
$295
$59
Quick Start 5-Pack, includes:
(5) Event Manager EE for SQL Server licenses
(5) Event Manager EE for Windows Task Scheduler licenses
$2,995
included
($4,475)
61%
Feature Comparison
With support for SQL Server, Oracle, Window Task Scheduler and Sharepoint platforms, Event Manager has many advanced features. See how the Enterprise Edition or Standard Edition can help you optimize performance.
SQL Sentry Event Manager is licensed per individual monitored instance. First year annual software maintenance
is required and provides technical support via e-mail and phone, fixes and updates and free version upgrades.
Customers can upgrade from Standard to Enterprise edition at any time without having to reinstall. Simply pay
the difference and receive a new license key.
Product Evaluation
Check out Greg's blog on version 6.2 and Aaron's
overhead analysis. Download Performance Advisor for SQL Server, Performance Advisor for Analysis Services, and Event Manager.
Event Manager's advanced queuing features make it easy to prevent job
conflicts related to occasional runtime deviations, and enforce
inter-job dependencies. You can set a job to queue or be queued for a
specified time, limit the total number of jobs in the queue at any one
time, and control a job's behavior when it pops off the queue.
