The reports assume that they will ne uploaded to the Report Manager’s root folder and use a shared data source named MDW. The reports also integrate with the new Query Hash Statistics reports.

You can download them from my SQLBlog.com download site.

To learn more about the Data Collector, check out these links.

• SQL Server 2008 Data Collector Proof of Concept – How to get started with Data Collector in your organization
• SQL Server Query Hash Statistics – Replacement for the shipping Query Statistics collection set
• Writing Reports Against the Management Data Warehouse – This is part 1 of the series on MDW reports. You can see all the articles through this link.

Be sure to click on the attachment link to download the slides.

SQLSaturday47 Performance Data Collection Strategies.pptx

Download the Query Hash Statistics Collection Set

The Query Hash Statistics collection set was created by Bart Duncan of Microsoft. At the tail end of the SQL Server 2008 release cycle, the Manageability team ran out of time to incorporate the late changes that the Engine team made to support the “Query Fingerprint” and “SQL Fingerprint” features. See Bart Duncan’s blog post – “Query Fingerprints and Plan Fingerprints (The Best SQL 2008 Feature That You've Never Heard Of)” for a deep understanding of how this works as well.

What it this means for the Data Collector is that the collection of Query Plans and Text is highly optimized with the new Query Hash Statistics collection set. In addition, Bart has created a set of reports which offers more insight into the most expensive queries running on your system.

Download the Query Hash Statistics project and unzip the files to a shared location accusable by the computer hosting the MDW and the computers hosting the SQL Server database engines that you’ll collect data from.

Getting Started with Data Collection

I’m going to assume that you’ve already installed SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 Database Engine and Management Tools. Optionally you can install Reporting Services for running the RDL files that I’ll provide.

The MSDN topic “Getting Started with the Data Collector”, goes over the basic steps for creating the Management Data Warehouse database and the Data Collector, but there a few things that you should know before you begin.

• Plan on Centralized Collection. The MDW has the most value when the database is on server that is not used for your production workloads. The Data Collector is designed with this configuration in mind. This eliminates most of the “Heisenberg Observer Effect”. If you already have a SQL Server instance running System Center Operations Manager, I recommend putting the MDW database there as a single management host. The instance doesn’t need too much power, just plenty of disk space available.
• Planning MDW Storage. For pessimistic planning, your MDW will grow 600 MB per day per instance for 14 days (the default retention period for the system collection sets). Once the retention period kicks in, data and collection logs will get purged at 2am local time for the centralized MDW.  You’re looking at 8.4 GB times 30 instances or 252 GB.
• Creating the MDW via the Wizard. Now that you know the pessimistic size for the MDW, when you run the wizard use this value for the initial size of the MDW versus the default of 100MB. This way you don’t get a performance hit all the time in the MDW as it grows 10MB at a time. You should set the growth size to 10GB as well when new instances are added. You can leave the transaction file size as the default since this rarely grows in size.
• Keep Security Simple. For the POC, you’ll want to use a single domain user account that has admin rights to the SQL Server instance and also admin rights to the machines that will be reporting data to the MDW. This is not the recommended final configuration, but makes the POC easier to configure. You can always go back to a lower privileged proxy account once you understand all of the moving parts.
• Set up Data Collection. For each of the instances you want to collect data from, you’ll run the Configure management Data Warehouse Wizard. Once the wizard completes, go to the Query Statistics system collection set under the Data Collector node as shown below and issue the Stop Data Collection Set command.

• Follow the Quick Start Guide for Query Hash Statistics. This page contains steps to configure the prerequisites, which you can skip since I’ve already covered them above.

After updating the MDW to support the new collection set, installing the collection set on the target instance, and copying the reports as instructed to the MDW server, you are ready to go.

Query Hash Statistics Reports

The reports provided for the SQL Server Query Hash Statistics collection set replace the Query Statistics reports. To open the reports, connect SSMS to the SQL Server instance that hosts your MDW database, right-click on the MDW database in Object Explorer, and select "Custom Report..." from the Reports submenu. Browse to the location where you extracted the Query Hash Statistics files, and open MdwOverviewCustom.rdl. You will not need to manually browse to the .RDL file after this; you'll find the report name in the Reports context menu. The first time you open a custom report, SSMS will ask you to confirm that you trust the report.

You’ll want to wait a few hours after collecting data to run the reports so that you can start making sense of the data.

It’s that easy. In the next blog post, I’ll cover how to install the MDW reports on an SSRS server.

Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @billramo

Hi All,

      As of November 22, after 15 years at Microsoft as a Program Manager, I'm joining a new company called http://www.advaiya.com. They specialize in developing strategy for the Microsoft product line, delivering content to the community and the Microsoft sales force, training and education, and working with the Microsoft sales force doing pre-sales activities. I'll do what I can to stay away from too much "Marketitecture", but no promises. :-) In this new role, it's going to be my job along with Regional Director Scott Golightly to contribute to the SQL Server community. I look forward to blogging with SQLBlog.com and hope to see you on the road.

Cheers,
Bill Ramos
Follow me on https://twitter.com/billramo
Now blogging at: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/bill_ramos/default.aspx

Up until this point, I’ve walked through step by step how the MDW reports could be recreated to use SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2 and edit them in Report Builder 3.0.

At last week’s SQL PASS, I announced in my Wednesday session that I would release the source to the RDL files that I demonstrated.

At the bottom of this post, you’ll find a zip file that contains the RDL files that we converted up to this point. I say we because this was a collaboration with Bart Duncan – author of  Query Hash Statistics, Rachna Agarwal from our Microsoft IT department in Hyderabad India and myself.

Download Query Hash Stats

The first think you will want to do is download and install the SQL Server Query Hash Statistics project on MSDN Code Gallery. This includes a new version of the Query Statistics collection set – the old one – you’ll want to turn off – and a set of reports that can run inside of SSMS as a custom report. I’ve included a slightly modified version of Bart Duncan’s reports that work in SSRS.

May the Source Be With You

You will want to refer back to my post “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5” that lists of the MDW reports and there relationship to each other. These reports assume that you have created shared data source called MDW in your Reports manager filder. Just unzip the reports and upload them to your Reporting Services server. Start with the new MdwOverviewCustom.rdl file and you should be good to go.

Here is a list of the reports you will find at the bottom of this posting in MDW RDL Files.zip.

MdwOverviewCustom.rdl – Bart’s new an improved Overview report

mdw_overview.rdl – The original one as part of the blog series

QueryHashStatsReportsDetail.rdl – From Query Hash Stats that includes a query to get the execution plan.

QueryHashStatsReportsTopN.rdl – The new and inproved Query Statistics report from Query Hash Stats. You’ll never want to look back after seeing this report.

server_activity.rdl – From the blog series.

sql_active_requests.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5”

sql_activity.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5”

sql_disk_snapshot.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5”

sql_memory_snapshot.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5”

sql_waits_blocking_chain_detail.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5” This report needs some debugging.

sql_waits_blocking_snapshot.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5” This report needs some debugging.

sql_waits_generic_snapshot.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5”

sql_wait_stats_snapshot.rdl – See “What are all these reports anyways? – MDW Report Series Part 5”

Send Your Comments Via Twitter

That’s it!  Have fun with the source. Let me know what you think about them on https://twitter.com and include my @billramo address and the hash tag #MDWReports.

One Little Gotcha

The source reports point to a shared MDW datasource on my old machine at Microsoft. You'll most likely end up with the following error:

• The report server cannot process the report or shared dataset. The shared data source 'MDW' for the report server or SharePoint site is not valid. Browse to the server or site and select a shared data source. (rsInvalidDataSourceReference)

The workaround is pretty simple, create your own MDW shared data source and then after uploading the report, open it up in Report Builder 3.0 or BIDS. Simply go the MDW data source, right click and select properties. Click on the Browse button to find your version of the MDW data source and click OK. Save the report,, and you should be good to go.

Final_MDW_RDL's.zip

If you missed SQL PASS or you didn’t get your copy of SQL Server code named “Denali”, you’re in luck. You can now download it from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6a04f16f-f6be-4f92-9c92-f7e5677d91f9

For the full experience, you will want to run the 64 bit version on Windows Server 2008 R2. You can find the TechNet 180 day evaluation copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 at: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd459137.aspx

Availability Groups Setup

To test our the new Availability Group feature set, you will need at least on good sized Hyper-V box that can run two VMs each with Windows Server 2008 R2 and then install the feature “Failover Clustering” on each node.  Then, on each node, install an instance of Denali on each of the nodes. Use a Windows account for the database engine instance because the two instances need to talk to each other along with a shared location for the initial backup/restore seeding process.

You are not installing SQL Server Failover Cluster instances, so you don’t need a shared storage device. Think of Availability Groups as Database Mirroring on steroids.

I typically test with 1GB Hyper-V machines and then set the SQL Server memory limit to 500MB (thanks to BrentO for this tip at SQL PASS).

On each instance, you need to “Enable SQL HADR service” using SQL Server Configuration Manager.

Restore some test databases from one of your existing systems onto the database engine instance that you designate as the Primary. make sure the recovery model is set to Full. You may need to take a full backup and a transaction backup to get things to work in the wizard.

While connected to the Primary instance in the Object Explorer (OE), make a new connection to the Secondary instance in OE. This is to make sure both instances can talk to each other. To be extra paranoid, go to the Secondary computer; connect to the instance on that computer; and then connect to the Primary instance. This is to make sure you don’t run into any Kerberos issues.

From there, you’ll restart the instance on both nodes; launch SSMS; expand the Manageability node; right click on the Availability Group folder; and choose the New Availability Group… command.

Rather than go through the specifics of the wizard, it should be intuitively obvious what you need to do. When you add the Secondary replica instance in the wizard, and for the Primary replica as well, change the Read Mode in Secondary setting for both to “Allow all Connections”. This enables all applications like SSMS and Excel to access the databases that you selected for the availability group as read-only databases.

Check out the HADR books-on-line for the topic at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff878484(SQL.110).aspx. BrentO also has a great write up titled “SQL Server Denali: HADRON ROCKS.“

Customizing the Keyboard

Before you file the connect item that Ctrl+E no longer executes a query – we know about this already – and the team is apologizes for the temporary inconvenience. F5 and the often forgotten Alt+X keys still work.

The Denali SQL Server Management Studio now uses the Visual Studio 2010 shell. As part of the conversion to the new shell, the team left in the ability for you to customize the keyboard just like the full Visual Studio product! At this point you should be saying w00t

To add Ctrl+E to Execute a query, do the following:

• Go to the Tools menu and select Customize
• Click on the Commands tab in the Customize dialog and then click on the Keyboard… button at the bottom of the dialog.
• In the Press shortcut keys field, press Ctrl+E

You’ll see where we goofed up by assigning Ctrl+E as a global shortcut key to Query Execute (Ctrl+E(DMX Script Editor))

To fix this snafu, to the following:

• In the “Show Commands Containing” control, type query.execute and press the tab key.
• In the drop down the list of available values in the “Use new shortcut in:” control and select SQL Query Editor.
• Press Ctrl+E in the “Press shortcut keys:” control and click on the Assign button.
• Then click OK to dismiss the keyboard Options and Close to dismiss the Customize dialog

Ctrl+E now works. In the next public release of Denali, this will be fixed.

For more information regarding keyboard customization in Denali, see the topic “Manageability Enhancements (Database Engine)”

Don’t forget to follow https://twitter.com/ms_sql_server for breaking news and use the #denali hash tag. If you are having problems, check out the MDSN forums and as always, you can use the “Community” menu and “Report a Bug” command to file a Connect bug or suggestion. Don’t forget to use search to see if someone as filed a Connect bug on the same problem already like “SSMS Short Cut key "CTRL + E" is not working to execute any query”

Monday

SQL PASS Welcome Reception 6-8pm

This event is taking place at Washington State Convention Center in 6ABC. It’s a great chance to meet and greet old and new friends. Don’t forget the Quiz bowl. Team 2 with Buck Woody and Jen McCown should be a hoot.

SQL PASS Speakers and Volunteers Party 8-10pm

It turns out that none of the Microsoft speakers got the official invite, but we are able to attend. If you are a Microsoft speaker reading this, please email me for the details. I hear that bowling is involved.

Tuesday

Ted Kummert’s Keynote 8:45 to 10am

This is a keynote that you don’t want to miss. Tons of announcements and demos in 6ABC

Pickup Kilt for SQL Kilt Wednesday 10am

I’ll be picking up my kilt for my Tuesday 4:30 session on SCOM and BPA for the DBA where I will be modeling for UtiliKilt!

Utilikilt in Seattle opens its doors weekdays from 10am to 6pm. If you buy a kilt from them, be sure to mention my name. I! happen to be a official Utilikilt evangelist. did you know that they are the largest kilt manufacture in the United States? You can find their store at:

Utilikilts Flagship Retail Store
Authorized Dealer
620 1st Ave
Seattle WA 98104 – Map
(206) 282-4226

Be sure to learn how to best wear your kilt at http://blog.albanach.org/2006/07/how-to-wear-kilt-literally.html. Check out the link “Sit like a lady” as well. 

Dev Pod Duty on 6th Floor – 11am 1:30pm

Learn what we are doing in the new release of SQL Server to making developers more productive. You can also learn more about that we did in SQL Server 2008 with Data-Tier Applications.

DBA448M - Si Se Puede! Achieving Separation of Duties with SQL Server Room 608 with @SQLGal from 3-4:15pm

Speaker - DBA268M - What’s new with SQL Management Pack and SQL Best Practices Analyzer? 4:30 to 5:45pm in Room 613-614

Can someone please bring a camera to my session? I’d like to prove that I was the first of the Ramos Clan to wear a kilt. I’m giving away System Center related books. I’ll also have Hershey chocolate bars, peanut butter, and Reese’s peanut butter cups – you’ll have to attend this session to understand the meaning.

Inappropriate PASS Sessions Party 2010 6:30pm

This party filled up fast, but I was one of the lucky ones.

SQL Sentry VIP Party  8:30

I’ve been invited to a private party hosted by the folks from SQL Sentry. I’m looking forward to seeing @AaronBertrand in his new role at SQL Sentry. If you haven’t checked out their free Query Execution Plan viewer, please do so. I showed it off to our SQL Performance Lab folks and they love it.

Wednesday

Keynote Speaker Day 2 - Tom Casey 9-10am 6ABC

This is another keynote that you don’t want to miss.

Microsoft® SQL Server® Mission Critical Booth Duty 10:45 to 1pm

I’d like to tell you want I’m going to be talking about at the booth, but I have to wait until after Tom Casey’s keynote and announcements.

DBA239 - Inside the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector, Ben Nevarez, 3-4:15pm, Room 4C4

Learn the basics of the Data Collector and Management Data Warehouse. My session on writing reports against the MDW follows.

Speaker - DBA450M - Managing system performance with the Data Collector and Management Data Warehouse with Reporting Services, 4:30-5:45pm, Room 4C4

I will unlock the mysteries around the Management Data Warehouse and how how you can build your own reports using SQL Server 2008 R2 Report Builder 3.0. I’ll also release a zip file that includes the key MDW reports as RDL files that you can customize for your own shop. Right after the session, Ben and I will head down to Room 305 to do an extended Q&A session.

Be sure to check out Bart Duncan’s Query Hash Statistics codeplex project that extends the DC and MDW to give better results with less storage that the existing Query Statistics collection set and reports. He’s been trying to ship this code since early 2007 and it’s finally out. It is so cool, I had to work it into my demos.

 SQL Karaoke, Bush Garden from 7pm

Kilt’s and karaoke – can it get any better?

Thursday

AD475S - Query Tuning Tips, 10:15 to 11:45, Room 2AB, Itzik Ben-Gan

This is the first chance that I’ll get to hear Ben talk. I’ve always been scheduled opposite of his sessions.

DBA449M - Expert Query Performance Troubleshooting, 1 to 2:15pm, Room 3AB, Boris Baryshnikov, Conor Cunningham

You can never learn too much when it comes to tuning queries.

SQL PASS Focus Group - SQL Server and System Center Better Together, 3-4:30pm, Room 305

This is a by invitation only session that’s now full. It’s an extension of my Tuesday afternoon session help understand why DBAs don’t use SCOM as much as they could.

Plug for Focus Groups

Don’t miss this great opportunity to participate in one of the many focus groups that Microsoft will be conducting at PASS Summit 2010. It’s easy to sign-up! Just choose the focus group you want to participate in from the listing below and email the person who is assigned to that topic area. Your contact will be able to answer any further questions you might have about the focus group as well as schedule your participation.

All focus groups will be held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center during the hours of the conference. Please choose from the topics below:

Focus Group Title and Contact
Focus Group Description

SQL Virtualization Experience, Present and Future
(Serdar Sutay)

Offering a highly available SQL Server environment depends on adherence to best practices and awareness of the latest patches and updates. More information on managing your SQL Server environment can help increase uptime by decreasing the time to resolve unplanned downtime. Join this focus group to help shape the next generation of Microsoft tools to help analyze the configurations of your SQL Server deployments.

DC and MDW
(Bill Ramos)

The DC & MDW focus group is to gather birds of a feather interested in learning more about the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector and Management Data Warehouse from Bill Ramos and Benjamin Nevarez. This focus group is open to anyone attending Bill’s and Benjamin’s sessions and will start at 5:50 pm.

Compliance in the Cloud
(Al Comeau)
Customers who have or are investigating deployment on SQL Azure, or are in general considering deploying in the cloud, to influence future planning in the areas of Security, Privacy, and Compliance.

SQL Server Configuration Analysis Futures
(Paul Mestemaker)

Offering a highly available SQL Server environment depends on adherence to best practices and awareness of the latest patches and updates. More information on managing your SQL Server environment can help increase uptime by decreasing the time to resolve unplanned downtime. Join this focus group to help shape the next generation of Microsoft tools to help analyze the configurations of your SQL Server deployments.

Technology Trends & the DBA
(Mark Stempski)

This moderated session will explore the current state of deploying and managing SQL Server within the Enterprise and discuss how trends like commodity hardware, virtualization, cloud computing (public & private), and compliance & auditing requirements are changing the way IT uses technology to bring business value and how these change the role of the DBA.

Upgrade and Patching
(Mark Stempski)

The purpose of this focus group is to understand upgrade and patching requirements and scenarios for both “public clouds” and “private clouds.”  We will lead the participants through a discussion and will ask then to fill out a small set of survey questions. We are looking for  a better understanding of customer’s expectations and requirements for high availability SLAs for upgrade and patching, understand pain points, etc.

Alerting in RS
(Mark Stempski)

Participants will see latest instantiation of Alerting for Reporting Services, participate in Q and A and help us identify and prioritize enhancements for further work.

Enhanced Contextual Help for Reporting Services/other MS BI Product Offerings
(Mark Stempski)

Participants will be shown concepts depicting expanding contextual help for Report Builder 3.0 and beyond and be asked to provide feedback to help us choose between competing designs. Previous customer comments and 2 benchmark tests of RB 3.0 have provided those areas that we think could benefit from this approach which we think might be an alternative to Office Ribbon contextual help. Participants will help us determine future of delivery of on-line and local help with inputs to MSDN and TECH Net for the Business Intelligence products.

Windows Azure Platform Development Experience (Mark Stempski)

Are you working on the Windows Azure Platform? If so, we’d like to talk with you. We want to learn about your experience, and the challenges you faced as you developed your application. We also like “get your reaction to some ideas about Windows Azure’s future. To thank you for your help, we’ll be providing you with a selection of Microsoft Hardware or Software as a gift.

SSIS/DTS Package, Database Table, View and Report Dependency and Impact Relationships
(Dawei Huang)

Join us to discuss your current practice about dealing with SSIS/DTS package, database table, view and report dependency and impact relationships. You will also be involved in a short design exercise for some of the scenarios we are thinking about. If you are a SSIS/DTS/ETL/DBA, you are welcome to join the discussion.

Survey Instrument (DATSTAT) for Classifying Users, Tasks and Environment that can be Administered in Several Venues at PASS Summit
(Mark Stempski)

PASS participants will also be encouraged to visit an on-line survey. The survey is designed  to allow us to easily gather user needs and requirements and contact information. It also affords another communication vehicle between the product groups and users as often users will be invited to opt into various research activities. These activities run the gamut from early conceptual pieces through product definition work (prototypes) to early actual bits such as the CTPs or other release vehicles. Early looks and an opportunity to influence what we build at the early stages product development stages in exchange for telling us about your needs, something about yourself and work environment. 

Focus on Design with the Microsoft Learning User Experience Team
(Barbara Birney)

Feel strongly about your experience finding classes to take in our Training Catalog and locating training centers you can use online? Our MSL User Experience Team would like to talk with non-certified IT Professionals and Developers about how effective our website experience meets your needs.

Influencing SQL Certification Exams - Be a Part of the Community of Item Contributors
(Don Tanedo)

This session will cover the role of subject matter experts in the development of certification exams, the methods of assessing skills in Microsoft certification exams, and the value of communities in the direction and focus of SQL Server certifications.

Present and Future of HP-Microsoft BI and DW Joint Technology
(Yaya Guo)

Join HP and Microsoft in this session, as we share joint development plans on the latest BI and DW technology, during which you will gain unparalleled insight into the direction on HP appliances and MS SQL solutions.

Hope to see you at SQL PASS!

It just dawned on me that in preparing for SQL PASS and helping folks understand more about the existing MDW reports, that there is zero documentation on what reports are in SSMS for the system collection sets. Kalen Delaney covered the top level reports in her SQL Server 2008 white paper SQL Server 2008 Management Data Warehouse. In the SQL Server 2008 documentation, there is one topic How to: View a Collection Set Report that covers the three main reports. That’s it!

In this blog post, I’ll provide an overview of each of the reports so that you know what we’ll end up with once I’ve published all of the RDL files – rewritten for Reporting Services 2008 R2.

Report Time Line Control

The report time line control allows the user to select a point in time for reports showing data over time. The grayish blue areas represent time periods where there is data in the warehouse. The broad blue line represents the boundaries of the currently-selected time window. The report reflects the data in the blue window.

The user can navigate (change the size or position of the selected time window) using the buttons below the timeline, or by clicking on an arbitrary point on the timeline.  Here is an example of a timeline control for an MDW instance that has no data.

Report Drill-Through Relationships

This is the “money” diagram that shows the navigation relationship between all of the MDW reports.

Reports in the MDW

This section shows examples of each of the MDW reports. The good news is that I don’t have to describe them for you since the description of each of the reports is in the header for the report.  Hopefully the data that is presented in the report is intuitively obvious to the casual observer.  Yes, the images are a bit on the old side, but they are mostly what we ended up shipping for SQL Server 2008. There were no changes made to the reports for SQL Server 2008 R2. Here we go…

Server Activity History

System CPU Usage

Launch this report by clicking on the green System line in the %CPU Utilization chart in the Server Activity History report.

System Disk Usage

Launch this report by clicking on the green System line in the Disk I/O Usage chart in the Server Activity History report.

SQL Server Memory Usage

Launch this report by clicking on the light blue SQL Server line in the Memory Usage chart in the Server Activity History report.

System Memory Usage

Launch this report by clicking on the green System line in the Memory Usage chart in the Server Activity History report.

SQL Server Waits

Launch this report by clicking anywhere within the SQL Server Waits chart in the Server Activity History report.

SQL Server Blocking

Launch this report by clicking on the Lock hyperlink within the SQL Server Waits report.

SQL Server Blocking Chain Detail

Launch this report by clicking on either the blocking chain part in the chart or on the Chain # link number in the list in the SQL Server Blocking report.

SQL Server Active Requests

Launch this report by clicking on the Sample Time within the SQL Server Blocking Chain Detail report.

When you expand the SPID row, you get details for that SPID as shown below.

SQL Server Observed Waits

Launch this report when clicking on any of the other wait hyperlinks in the Wait Category list in the SQL Server Wait report.

Note, in this report, it shows the queries that just happen to be sampled during the time of the observed waits. If you need to perform detailed wait analysis, check out Jonathan Keyayais’s white paper Using SQL Server 2008 Extended Events.This is 500 level material, but the MDW reports tend to get you close enough.

Query Statistics History

Launch this report directly from the Data Collection reports menu or my clicking on the blue SQL Server line in the % CPU Utilization chart in the Server Activity History report.

My motto here – click on the big stuff.  We only list 10 queries here because these are the most expensive ones to worry about. Listing more would be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic while it’s sinking.

Query Details

Launch this report by clicking on any hyperlink text in any of the reports that has them. For example, SQL Server Observed Waits, SQL Server Active Requests, and the Query Statistics reports all have links to Transact SQL queries.

Note, clicking on the Edit Query Text link in the report, launches the query editor with the selected text. This is due to a limitation of the report viewer control not having the ability to select text and copy it to the clipboard. Once we get the reports ported to run with SQL Server Reporting Services, you’ll be able to copy text from the reports.

You can also click in the Duration, Physical Reads and Logical Writes links to sort the plans by these dimensions.

Query Plan Detail

Launch this report by clicking on the Query Plan line in the chart or the Plan # in the list in the Query Details report.  The top part of the report is the same as the Query Details report, but the killer demo portion is shown below.

If there is a missing index for the plan, you can see the query text, but the copy/paste problem exists. So we added the View Graphical Execution Plan link to this report to display the execution plan that was captured by the Query Statistics collection set.

The Other Reports

We have Disk Usage reports, but they aren’t all that interesting and have some nasty bugs that require rewriting with the time line control.  I’ll leave them for a future blog post.

Other Performance Troubleshooting References

For some great references on troubleshooting SQL Server performance problems, check out http://sqlcrunch.com/PerformanceTuning/tabid/100/Default.aspx. Rod Colledge has done a great job of cataloging all of the greatest white papers on all topics around SQL Server.

See you at SQL PASS

I’ll be at SQL PASS presenting how to write reports against the MDW for hosting them on Reporting Services on Wednesday at 4:30. my session follows Ben Nevarez’s Data Collector and Management Data Warehouse session. Right after my session, Ben and I will handle Q&A in room 305.

Be sure to wear your Kilt on Wednesday - http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/na2010/Connect/AfterHours.aspx. I’ll be wearing my Kilt on both Tuesday and Wednesday to drum up support for the event.  If you need a Kilt, check out the folks at UtiliKilts in Seattle or order on line.

Bill Ramos, Principal Program Manager, SQL Manageability

In my previous blog post Installing the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 I showed how you can install SCOM 2007 R2 on a “bare-metal” VM using  SQL Server 2008 R2 as the back end. One of the big features of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Pack is that we reduced the noise (or false alerts) reported by SCOM. This was done by disabling many of the alerts that we initially thought were critical/important and realized, it was better for you – the DBA – to determine what you think is important.

In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to enable and test one particular rule – Blocking Sessions – that is part of the SQL 2008 DB Engine set of rules.

This blog post is part of the series of posts that I’m using to prepare for my SQL PASS 2010 session on the SQL MP.

Using SQL Server Management Studio to find blocking sessions

First, a little background on how to find out your blocking problems within SQL Server Management Studio. This is importance since once you find the blocking SQL Process ID (SPID) , you’ll want to probably kill the SPID and then fix the application or query that is causing the problem for the rest of your system.

Standard Reports – Server – Activity – All Blocking Transactions

The Activity – All Blocking Transactions report is available by right clicking on the Server of interest; select the Reports command; then the Standard Reports command; and finally selecting the Activity – All Blocking Transactions report. As you can see from the example above, you can get a real time view of the blocking problem with this report. The trick is, you need to run the report when the problem is happening to diagnose identify the problem SPID.

Using Activity Monitor

With Activity Monitor, you can quickly filter to the “Head Blocker” SPID by clicking on the [v] control for the Head Blocker column in the Processes section of the tool and select the value 1 – if present – to filter to the offending SPID. In the case shown above, the connection string information for the Application identifies the offending SPID as “BadApplication ver 1.2”. If only all problems were so easy to identify.

By right clicking on the highlighted row in Activity Monitor, you can issue the “Kill Process” command. If the problem reoccurs, you can consider using the APP_NAME() function within the Classifier Function for the Resource Governor feature introduced in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition to block the application from connecting to the server.

Configuring SCOM 2007 and the SQL Server MP to detect blocking sessions

Out of the box, after you have discovered the SQL Server computer using SCOM 2007 – see Installing the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Once the system has cycled and SCOM agent is reporting health results to the Operations Console, you’ll see that even though a blocking situation is in progress, the monitor for the Microsoft SQL Server – Computers – indicates a Healthy state for the computer in question as shown below.

I happen to know that the highlighted server – BILLRAMO-KAT1 – is experiencing a blocking transaction problem. In order to detect the blocking scenario, you need to create an Override for the SQL Server MP.

Creating the Override for Blocking Sessions

To create and override for the blocking sessions scenario, you’ll need to do the following steps:

1. Click on the Authoring workspace bar and select the Monitors item under the Management Pack Objects folder in the Authoring tree as shown below.
   
2. In the Look for: control in the Monitors workspace, type in the phrase Blocking Sessions and then click Find Now. SCOM searches across all of the Management Packs that you have installed looking for the Monitor that contains the phrase. Select the Blocking Sessions for Type SQL 2008 Blocked SID Provider as shown below.
   
3. There should be 2 Blocking Sessions monitors as a result of the search. The second one is located under the SQL 2005 DB Engine target. You’ll need to perform the same steps to set up the override for your SQL Server 2005 computers. Right click on the Blocking Sessions line and select the Overrides > Override the Monitor > For all objects of class: SQL 2008 DB Engine command. This displays the Override Properties.
   
4. Before you go and enable the override, you are going to create a new destination management back. If you were to create the override in the “Default Management Pack”, you will lose the ability to easily export the overrides you setup for SQL Server 2008 computers to share with others.  Creating the New destination management back, click on the New… button.
5. Complete the first page of the Create a Management Pack dialog as shown below with the name: SQL Server 2008 Customizations.
   
6. Click the Next button to go to the Knowledge Article page. You can leave this blank for now. This page allows you to provide information to the SCOM operator/DBA as to the purpose of the MP.  Click the Create button to complete the wizard. You should now see “SQL Server 2008 Customizations” as the destination management pack in the Overrides Properties dialog.
7. Depending on your service level agreement for your application, you will want to set override properties to values that are appropriate for your systems. For example, for systems that are in production, you hope that you tested any new applications to avoid the blocking problems in the first place, so the default Interval (sec) collection value of 300 makes sense. If you have a shop of cowboy coders slinging code into production, you might want to set the value to 30. For demonstration purposes, I’ve used the settings shown below.
   
8. Click the OK button and then switch over to your Monitoring workspace. After 30 seconds, navigate to the Computers node under Microsoft SQL Server and if you are impatient, press F5 to refresh. If all goes well, you should see the following Critical alert.
   
9. I know and you know that the Critical state was caused by the blocking session scenario, but the way you can tell for sure is to double click on the Critical state cell to display the Health Explorer for the computer as shown below.
   
   You can select the critical leaf node “Blocking Sessions” to see the knowledge article for the problem. If you click on the State Change Events tab, you can see when the last time a state transition occurred.

Back to SSMS Activity Monitor

At this point, you need to go back to SSMS to kill the offending SPID using Activity Monitor. SCOM provides an easy way to get to SSMS by going to the Database Engines node under the Server Roles for Microsoft SQL Server. You can then click on SQL Management Studio in the Actions pane as shown below.

To launch SSMS with the proper connection context, select the instance path with the Database Engines list and then click on the SQL Management Studio action indicated by the big red arrows above. Then, launch the Activity Monitor, select the Head Blocker, and kill the session. Problem solved!

Summary

Now you know how to:

• Create a custom management pack (attached to this blog post as “SQL Server 2008 Customizations.xml”). You can save yourself the trouble of using the dialogs by downloading this file to your SCOM machine, going to the Administration workspace, clicking on the “Import Management Packs…” command in the Actions pane, and selecting the XML file.
• Override a monitor that is disabled by default. You can also edit any of the enabled monitors the same way. Again, be sure to use the custom management pack vs. the Default Management pack
• Troubleshoot a blocking session problem using SCOM 2007 and SSMS – as I like to say – better together.

To learn more about the Blocking Sessions monitor and other monitors in the SQL Server Monitoring Management Pack, be sure to Download and read the SQLServerMPGuide.doc file.

SQL.Server.Customizations.xml

Abstract

In this blog post, I will go over the steps to install System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007 R2 and the recent release of the SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Pack (MP) on a bare bones Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtual machine.  I’ll include where you can download the various software components (free & evaluation copies). My goal is to make operational DBAs familiar with SCOM 2007 and the various MPs that are available to help you better manage large number of server instances.

This blog post is part of the series of posts that I’m using to prepare for my SQL PASS 2010 session on the SQL MP.

Installing SCOM 2007 R2 and the SQL Server 2008 R2 MP

I’m starting with a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V image with 4GB of RAM and 1 virtual CPU. This configuration is the minimum recommended configuration for all of the SCOM 2007 R2 features.

Step 0 – Download and install updates

There is always something out there that needs to get updated after installing Windows Server 2008 R2. Be sure to check for updates as part of your Initial Configuration Tasks as shown below.

Generally, you will need to reboot after this step to make sure Windows Server 2008 R2 didn’t have more updates that require a reboot. Just reboot to be on the safe side.

Step 1 – Add the IIS Role

After the reboot, you will need to add the IIS role to your server. Just click on the “Add roles” command shown above in the “Customize This Server” section of the Initial Configuration Tasks dialog. This will launch the Add Roles Wizard. At this point, I’m assuming you are logged into the server with a Windows login that is a system administrator for the machine.

Just click Next past the introduction page.  You will then select the Web Server (IIS) role as shown below.

Then click Next. The wizard will then take you to the “Introduction to Web Server (IIS)” page. You are welcome to read the page and click on the hyperlinks to read more about IIS, but we are focusing our attention on getting SCOM up and running.  So, click Next to move along.

The Role Services dialog is the tricky one since you need just about all of the services selected to pass the prerequisite checks for SCOM. So, select all of the check boxes to be on the safe side. At some point, I’ll follow up with a blog post on what you can disable. See below for what the Role Services page should look like before selecting the Next command.

Once you have selected every service – click Next to go to the Confirmation page and then click Install. With any luck, you should get to the Results page indicating “Installation succeeded”.

Go ahead and click the close button for the Add Roles wizard.  Time for a quick test to see if IIS installed. go ahead and launch IE 8. If you are running with Enhanced Security Configuration, we’ll deal with that in a moment since you’ll need to download more software from the web.

In the IE8 address bar, type http://localhost. If all went well, you should see the following:

Go ahead and close the browser for now. You can also close the Initial Configuration Tasks dialog and you might want to check the box that says, “Do not show this window at login”.

As soon as the dialog closes, Windows Server 2008 R2 launches the Server Manager. At this point, let’s reconfigure “Configure IE ESC” so that you can browse the web without the annoying prompts. NOTE: It is Microsoft’s recommendation to have this feature on for production servers,, but we are just trying to get things spun up the first time with ease. So, be sure to turn ESC back on once everything is running well for you.

Go ahead and click on the Configure IE ESC link as shown below.

Then select Off for both Administrators and Users as shown below and click OK.

Step 1.5 – Installing AJAX

There is one more add-on that you must install called ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 that you can download from here. It’s also listed in the download links below. Just click on the Download button on the web site and run through the installation taking all of the defaults.

Step 2 – Installing SQL Server 2008 R2

I’m taking a gamble here since support for using SQL Server 2008 R2 was just announced on September 25, 2010 as part of a “FAST PUBLUSH” knowledge base article – see Support for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 that runs on a SQL Server 2008 R2 database. You don’t really need to check out KB Article 2425714 since I’ll guide you through the basics later on.

I’ll assume that you have access to the installation files for SQL Server 2008 R2. Check out the download links at the end of this posting for getting an evaluation copy. I recommend going with an Enterprise SKU since it has some cool features like row level compression for your database tables that can save you up to 20% or more disk space with a little more overhead on CPU. There are other great scalability features you can check out at the MSDN article titled Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2008 R2.

Go to your installation folder and the click on Setup.exe. This displays the SQL Server Installation Center as shown below. You’ll want to select the Installation page.

Then select the hyperlink for New installation or add features to an existing installation as shown below.

I’m not going to run through all of the installation screens, but here are the basics to get you up and running. To keep things simple, I’ll assume you will use a Windows domain account with system administration permissions for all of the SQL Server services. I know this is not recommended, and you can change to lower privileged accounts once everything is working.

1. On the Setup Role page, select the SQL Server Feature Installation option.
2. On the Features Selection page, click Select All – maybe unclick SQL Server Books Online – since the topics will point to the web based topics by default.
3. On the Instance Configuration page, select the Default instance.
4. On the Service Accounts page, click on the “Use the same account for all SQL Server services” button and then enter in the Windows account that has system administration privileges. Yes – I did it again – you should really use a low privileged account, but this is a test environment.  Make sure to set the Startup Type for SQL Server Agent to Automatic as well.  DO NOT CHANGE THE Collation for the server. SCOM requires the use of SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.
5. On the Database Engine Configuration page, be sure to click “Add Current User” for the admin account. Like a good DBA, be sure to change your data directories off the C: drive.
6. On the Analysis Services Configuration page, click “Add Current user” and change the Data Directories as needed.
7. On the Reporting Services Configuration page, select the top option for “Install the native mode default configuration”.
8. You should be all set for installing SQL Server 2008 R2

With any luck, setup would have gone without a hitch and you can close down the SQL Server Installation Center dialog.

Step 3 – Install Microsoft Office 2010

If you want to author your own Management Packs, you need to install as a minimum Microsoft Word. SCOM 2007 R2 will work with older versions of MS Word, but this is a new box, so you might as well install all of Office. At least, you no longer need Outlook to send emails with SQL Server. NOTE: You will need to install the 32-bit version of Office for this all to work correctly. SCOM uses the Visual Studio Tools for Office runtime which is a 32 bit tool and only works with 32 bit versions of Office at the time of this blog posting. 

Go ahead and just install with the default “Big Button” install option – Install Now.

Step 4 – Install SCOM 2007 R2

Note – Before you do anything, make sure you didn’t skip Step 1.5 above. If you forgot, the installation process will politely remind you that you needed to install the ASP.NET AJAX component. 

Go to your installation location for System Center Operations Manager R2 release and run OPSMGR2007R2SEL.exe from your local disk. This file is a self extracting zip file with all the components needed to install SCOM 2007 R2.

When you run the .exe file, you should see the following message box kicking off the installation process.

Followed by the WinZip Self-Extractor UI.

Click the Unzip bottom. At the end of the unzipping process, you should get a message box indicating that 243 file(s) unzipped successfully. Once you click OK, the System Center operations Manager 2007 R2 Setup will be displayed. You may find it hidden behind another window.  It looks like this:

Click on the Browse this CD because we need to “manually” run the DBCreateWizard command that is located in the SupportTools\AMD64 folder as shown below.

Here are the relevant instructions from the the article “Support for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 that runs on a SQL Server 2008 R2 database”.

Step 4.1 - How to use the DBCreateWizard tool to install the OperationsManager database

Note You must run the DBCreateWizard tool on the server that is running SQL Server 2008 R2.

1. Open the <InstallationMedia>\SupportTools\AMD64 folder
   Note <InstallationMedia> represents installation media of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.
2. Double-click the DBCreateWizard.exe file to start the Database Configuration Wizard.
   Note You may receive an error message when you start the wizard.
   For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   938997 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938997/ ) Operations Manager 2007 Support Tools requirements

3. On the Welcome page, click Next.
4. On the Database Information page, perform the following operations:
   • Under Database Type, select Operations Manager Database.
   • Under Full Database Instance Name, select the instance of SQL Server where you want the database to be installed.
     Note An instance of SQL Server has the name of <ServerName>\<InstanceName>. The default instance has the name of <ServerName>.
   • Leave the Create New Database option selected.
   • Leave the SQL Port box blank.
     Note If you do not provide a port, the Database Configuration Wizard uses the port 1433 to connect to SQL Server. However, if the instance of SQL Server that you specify uses a port other than 1433 for connection, you must specify the port in the SQL Port box.
   • By default, the database name is OperationsManager under Database Name.
   • By default, the database size is 500 megabyte (MB) under Database Size.
5. Click Next.
6. On the Management Group page, perform the following operations:
   • Under Management Group name, specify a name for the management group.
   • By default, the BUILTIN\Administrators user group is specified under Configuration Administrator. If you want to specify a different user group, follow these steps: (NOTE: I just went with BUILTIN\Administrators) 
     1. Click Browse.
     2. In the Select Group dialog box, click Locations.
     3. In the Locations dialog box, select the domain that contains the user group that you want to specify, and then click OK.
     4. Under Enter the object name to select, type the user group, and then click Check Names.
     5. If the name that you typed becomes underlined, click OK.
     For more information, see the "Before you Start" section of the following Microsoft TechNet website:

     http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd789046.aspx (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd789046.aspx)

7. On the Error Reporting page, optionally indicate whether you want to send error reports to Microsoft, and then click Next.
8. On the Summary page, review the configuration summary shown below, and then click Finish

If everything went according to plan, you will get a message box indicating that the “Database created successfully” and click OK.

Step 4.2 - How to use the DBCreateWizard tool to install the OperationsManagerDW database

Note You must run the DBCreateWizard tool on the server that is running SQL Server 2008 R2.

1. Open the <InstallationMedia>\SupportTools\AMD64 folder
   Note <InstallationMedia> represents installation media of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2.
2. Double-click the DBCreateWizard.exe file to start the Database Configuration Wizard.
   Note You may receive an error message when you start the wizard.
   For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   938997 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938997/ ) Operations Manager 2007 Support Tools requirements

3. On the Welcome page, click Next.
4. On the Database Information page, perform the following operations:
   • Under Database Type, select Operations Manager Data Warehouse Database.
   • Under Full Database Instance Name, select the instance of SQL Server where you want the database to be installed.
     Note An instance of SQL Server has the name of <ServerName>\<InstanceName>. The default instance has the name of <ServerName>.
   • Leave the Create New Database option selected.
   • Leave the SQL Port box blank.
     Note If you do not provide a port, the Database Configuration Wizard uses the port 1433 to connect to SQL Server. However, if the instance of SQL Server that you specify uses a port other than 1433 for connection, you must specify the port in the SQL Port box.
   • By default, the database name is OperationsManagerDW under Database Name.
   • By default, the database size is 500 megabyte (MB) under Database Size.
5. Click Next.
6. On the Summary page, review the configuration summary, and then click Finish.

Step 4.3 – Now it’s time to install SCOM 2007 R2

1. Click on the Hyperlink to “Install Operations manager 2007 R2”. Then, click Next on the welcome page.
2. Accept the license terms and click Next.
3. Type in a User Name and Organization and click Next.

Now comes the tricky part because we don’t want to install the Database components at this time as per the article “Support for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 that runs on a SQL Server 2008 R2 database”. This article neglects to tell you how not to install the Database components. Starting from the figure below:

Click on the icon drop down control next to the word Database as highlighted above.

Choose the command “This component will not be available.”. Once you’ve selected the command, the dialog should look like this:

• Enter in the name of your SQL Server into the dialog below and click Next.
  
  
• Enter in your Domain account name in the dialog below and press Next
  
• Enter in your domain name again for the SDK and Config Service Account and click Next.
  
• For the Web Console Authentication Configuration, choose the first option “Use Windows Authentication (Recommended)” and click Next.
• For the Customer Experience Improvement Program, chose the first option “Join the Customer Experience Improvement Program (Recommended). By doing this, we can see how you are using the product to determine if we are firing too many false alerts, or that you are not using certain reports, etc. This will help the product teams make rational decisions on feature enhancements based on your input. Click Next to continue. Then, click Install.

If life is treating you fairly, the installation should complete and display the following dialog.

You don’t want to Start the Console quite yet, but you do want to backup the Encryption Key when you Finish the wizard. just follow the steps for backing up the key to a box off-site from the original machine.  The instructions in the wizard are straightforward.

Step 4.3 - How to install System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting

Note You must follow these steps on the SQL Server Reporting Services server.

1. Open Computer Management.
2. In the Computer Management MMC snap-in, expand System Tools, expand Local Users and Groups, and then click Groups.
3. Locate the following group:
   SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSRS10_50.<SQLInstanceName>
4. Rename the group to the following by removing "_50" from the group name:
   SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSRS10.<SQLInstanceName>
   
5. Install System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting.
   For more information, see the following Microsoft TechNet Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb432143.aspx

   
   
   Important When you install System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting, you should not install the Data Warehouse component. See below image for not installing the DW component.
   
   
   The installation process is very similar to installing the main SCOM 2007 tools, so I’ll skip the dialogs. Again, when you get to the “Operational Data Reports” wizard page, please select Yes, send operational data reports to Microsoft.

6. After you install System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Reporting, rename SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSSRS10.<SQLInstanceName> back to original name SQLServerReportServerUser$<hostname>$MSSRS10_50.<SQLInstanceName>
   

Supported configurations for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2
For more information about supported configurations for Operations Manager 2007 R2 that runs on a SQL Server 2008 R2 database, visit the following Microsoft Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb309428.aspx

You can now Exit the SCOM 2007 R2 installation program

Step 5 – Install the SQL Server Monitoring Management Pack

Go to the download center for the free SQL Server MP at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8c0f970e-c653-4c15-9e51-6a6cadfca363&displaylang=en

1. Go ahead and download the SQLServerMPGuide.doc file for detailed information regarding the MP.
2. Click Download for the SQLServerMP.msi file and then run it in place – or save it to your Downloads folder and then run the MSI.
3. For the installation folder, leave it to the default location under the Program Files (x86) folder structure. Also, select to Install the MP for Everyone.
4. Click Install to download the files.

The files are simply downloaded to the install location, you now need to import the MP files into the SCOM Operations Console.

1. Go to the Start menu, locate the Operations Console, and click on the command. If all the stars aligned, you should see a screen that looks like this for Monitoring when you select Windows Computers in the Monitoring tree.
   
2. Now, select the Administration workspace item and then highlight the Management Packs node in the tree as shown below:
   
3. Now choose the Import Management Packs… command as shown above.  In the Select Management Packs dialog, click on the + Add button and choose Add from disk … as shown below.
   
4. Go ahead and click Yes to search the web for dependencies, but they are all in download location C:\Program Files (x86)\System Center Management Packs\SQLServerMP. press Ctrl+A to select all files in the dialog and click Open. Then, click the Install button.
5. You will see two Discovery and Monitoring packs for SQL 2005 and SQL 2008. SQL Server 2008 covers both 2008 and 2008 R2 release.
6. Once the import is complete, press the Close command.
7. Now click back to the Monitoring workspace and then expand the Microsoft SQL Server node and select Computers as shown below. You might have to click inside the detail area and press F5 to see your SCOM SQL instance.
   
8. To Add and new instance to monitor, select the Administration tab and click Discover Wizard… hyperlink as shown below.
   
9. Select the Windows computers option and click Next.
10. Choose the Advanced discovery option and det the Computer and Device Classes to Servers only and click Next..
11. Choose the Browse for option for the Discovery Method and type in the computer name you want to add in the dialog area.  You can also browse for computers.
12. Use your admin Windows account for the Administration Account and click Discover.
13. Check the FQDN for the SQL machine that you want to discover and click Next.
14. Chose the Other action for the Agent Action Account and type in your Windows credentials, then click Finish. This will display the Agent Management Task Status. Wait for this to finish.  You should see a dialog like this completing the addition of the new box. SCOM will attempt to enumerate all of the SQL Server instances on the box. Then click Close.
    
15. If you go have to Monitoring and click on Windows Computers, you should now wee two box names. When you go to SQL Computers, you should see two instances as well.

Software Evaluation Download Sites

Are the “go to” links to download evaluation copies of the software described  in this blog post.

• Windows Server 2008 R2  (64-bit only) – 180 Day Trial - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd459137.aspx
• SQL Server 2008 R2 – 180 Day Trial - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee315247.aspx
• System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 – 180 Day Trial - http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/operations-manager/om-try-it.aspx#downloads
• SQL Server Monitoring Management Pack – Free - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8c0f970e-c653-4c15-9e51-6a6cadfca363&displaylang=en
• Microsoft Office Professional 2010 – 60 Day Trial - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ee390818.aspx. You’ll need this if you want to author your own management pack.
• ASP.NET Ajax Extensions 1.0 – Free - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=ca9d90fa-e8c9-42e3-aa19-08e2c027f5d6&displaylang=en

Looking Forward to SQL PASS

As I continue to prepare for my SQL PASS session on the new SCOM MP for SQL Server, I’ll continue blogging – especially examples with using the new SQL Server 2008 R2 Monitoring MP.  I will also cover how the data collection with SCOM 2007 R2 can be used in conjunction with the SQL Server 2008 Data Collector and Management Data Warehouse and the SQL Server 2008 R2 manageability tools.

Please feel free to add a comment to the blog post and don’t forget to rate it!