How To Monitor SQL Servers using BizTalk360

Published on : Jul 11, 2013

Category : BizTalk360 Update

Saravana

Author

We recently introduced BizTalk360 version 6.5 with bunch of new monitoring capabilities. One of them is the ability to monitor your SQL Servers using BizTalk360. The heart of BizTalk server is underlying SQL server layer, which host all the core BizTalk system databases like Message Box, Management, SSO, Rules, BAM, Tracking etc. So it’s inevitable to monitor the health of the SQL server in order to maintain a healthy BizTalk Environment. Our objective with BizTalk360 is to focus on things that matters to BizTalk environment and make it easy to configure and manage when it comes to monitoring. Let’s take a quick look at how you can monitor SQL server using BizTalk360

Configure required SQL Servers

The very first thing you need to do is simply tell BizTalk360 the names of the SQL server you wanted to monitor. You can do this by navigating to “Settings“, and under “Monitor and Notify” section you will find the link “Add SQL Servers for Monitoring“, clicking the link will bring the screen as shown below. All you need to do it specify the name(s) of SQL server (comma separated) and press save. image Note: The BizTalk360 service account (the one under which IIS Application pool and Monitoring service is running) must have administrator rights on the SQL Servers. Once the above configuration is done, then the names of the SQL Server will show up in the tree view under “SQL Server” node and you can start monitoring various things in SQL Server as discussed below image

Monitoring Disks in SQL Server

image When you navigate to the Disks tab, it will automatically pick up all the disks in the SQL server and show a graphical view of each disk properties with total and available disk space as shown above. User can simply set the appropriate warning and error threshold for each disks in percentage (%). When the disk free space goes below the configured value, then BizTalk360 will start sending notifications. You’ll also see visual clue (green/red) showing whether the disk space is healthy or critical.

Monitoring NT Services in SQL Server

image You may wanted to keep an eye on certain NT services that’s running in SQL Server. BizTalk360 gives you the opportunity to automatically monitor and notify if the NT services are not running in the desired state. One of the biggest advantage of BizTalk360 NT services monitoring is you can monitor for any state. Example: You may purposely wanted to keep some services  in running state and some in stopped state.

Monitoring System Resources in SQL Server

image Two of the main system resources CPU usage and Memory consumption can be easily monitored using BizTalk360 with a click of a button. You set up the appropriate warning and error threshold for CPU and memory and system will start alerting if the system condition stays in configured warning/error  level for the persist duration, ex: 5 minutes (persist duration setting is configured at alarm level, which is not covered in this article)

Monitoring Event Logs in SQL Server

image You can monitor for various event log entry conditions using BizTalk360. This in itself could be very powerful and can cover various scenarios. You can have multiple combinations of event log monitoring, example: certain sources, certain event ids, certain text in the message, with configured threshold conditions. When you click on the “Add new Event Log Alert“, the new window as shown below pop-up. As you can see you can configure to monitor all SQL related events with a single rule. You can have multiple of these rules (ex: MSI related events, SSO related events etc). image

Conclusion

Our objective with monitoring aspect of BizTalk360 is to make it simple to configure, manage and use it on a day to day basis. We will not be able to match the power of general purpose monitoring solutions like SCOM, HP Operation Manager etc. when it comes to non-BizTalk stuff like SQ, but we wanted to cover some of the core monitoring that’s required from a BizTalk perspective on SQL servers. With big monitoring solutions it may take weeks/months to configure (with steep learning curve), but with BizTalk360 it can be done in few hours in an intuitive way. Download the latest version from our website and try it for free.