Suggestions
Welcome to the Redgate Monitor feature suggestions list. Tell us how we can improve Redgate Monitor by voting on these suggestions or by submitting your own ideas.
This is the easiest way to make an impact on Redgate Monitor’s roadmap. Check out the completed suggestions to see how your ideas have influenced us in the past. Please note that this list is one of multiple sources that drive our development, meaning that we will not always implement the highest-ranking suggestions.
To give your idea the greatest possible impact, please follow these guidelines:
- Describe the goal you’re trying to accomplish, rather than a specific solution to get there
- If you have a favoured solution, add it as a comment to your suggestion
- Give us as much context as possible
- Only make one suggestion per post. If you have multiple ideas, submit them in separate posts
- Comment and vote on existing posts to develop the ideas — the Redgate Monitor team will often stay quiet initially about new suggestions to see what you have to say!
If you have any questions visit the Redgate Monitor forum.
216 results found
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Increase user granularity and allow creating more than the 3 built in user accounts.
Increase user granularity and allow creating more than the 3 built in user accounts. For example, we have an offshore development team that would like access to their SQL instance, but can’t have access to any other instances. What I would like to do is to be able to create an account, assign permissions to that account against databases or instances, limiting the access they have to production systems. If we could get it to use AD integration rather than forms authentication as well as being able to set permissions granularly then that would be ideal.
86 votesSQL Monitor 5.0 introduces Active Directory integration with granular control over which user sees what. Please note that you will need to enable Active Directory authentication in order to make use of this functionality
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Identify head blocker in a blocking chain
It would be quite useful and timesaving if one could identify the head blocker for a blocked process (as done in SSMS's Activity Monitor, Processes tab). Otherwise when get a lot of blocked process alerts, you have to manually figure out the head blocker by analysing all the alerts.
79 votesThis work was completed in version 5 – apologies for the delay in updating.
If you view a “Blocking process” alert, clicking on the ‘Processes’ tab (next to the details tab) will show the head blocking process, followed by any blocked processes.
If this doesn’t meet your requirements, please let us know how we can improve this alert.
Kind regards
Adam -
Support for regular expressions
Most of the alarms need more granular support for excluding/including different things. Using regular expression is a good idea and should be extended further. For example you defenitly need to be able to filter out things from the alarm on the sql server errorlog. Without it's useless.
74 votesThanks for this suggestion, and for the supporting comments.
Several alerts now allow you to enter regular expressions to match text you want to ignore, to stop alerts being raised in certain situations.
For example:
- Deadlock (XE) alerts can be filtered by database, login name & resource (added in version 8.0.22 released November 13th 2018)
- Blocking Process alert can be filtered to exclude queries with a SQL process names, SQL commands or objects match regular expressions
- Job Duration Unusual alerts can exclude jobs matching regular expressions
- Long Running Query alerts can be filtered to exclude queries with a SQL process names, SQL commands or objects match regular expressionsWe will mark this suggestion as completed, so that the votes can be returned while we continue to look at ways to make alerting more useful. Please make new suggestions for specific improvements you would like to see,…
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Enable and track wait stats
I would like to see an overview of wait statistics along with historical tracking of those waits. I currently have queries that would show the total wait time, but other tools I have used will provide a current snapshot of these waits as well as store them historically so that I can monitor changes.
72 votesHi,
We are excited to annouce that SQL Monitor v4.0 has been released. This release contains Performance diagnostics features which let you analyze the waits and queries affecting SQL Server performance on the Instance overview and Database overview pages. Check out the release notes for more details.
Thanks,
SQL Monitor Development Team -
Show the database name not just dbid in the Lock Details of a Deadlock alert
I've got to do the extra step of:
SELECT name,dbid
FROM master..sysdatabasesto figure out which database the deadlock is referring to... shouldn't have to do this.
71 votesDatabase name is now shown for 2005+ deadlock alerts following the v4 release.
Thanks again for the suggestion and votes.
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One-time Maintenance Window
We perform updates to (nearly) all our Windows servers on our domain monthly. I'd like see the ability to set a maintenance window and have it removed once it has passed, rather than having the maintenance window fixed to set time every week.
One use case is "silencing" alert generation while investigation is in progress
71 votesThanks for this suggestion. SQL Monitor 10 now allows teams to suppress alerts, or just their notifications, over certain periods using alert suppression windows. Please see What’s New in SQL Monitor 10 for more details (https://www.red-gate.com/hub/product-learning/sql-monitor/whats-new-in-sql-monitor-10).
We hope this meets requirements and will mark it as completed. Please raise further suggestions for any improvements you would like to see.
Thanks,
SQL Monitor product team
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Long-running query alert - add an option to exclude queries based on the USER running it
This alert already has the options to exclude queries (via RegEx) based on the process name or SQL commands/objects used. I miss a similar option for excluding queries based on the user running the query.
An example: let's say you have a job that runs SSIS job steps using a proxy->credential->dedicated domain user. The SSIS packages run loads of SQL queries, some taking a long time - but that might be expected and OK (let's say the job is a nightly ETL process for a DW). Without excluding queries based on that user (simple but effective!) you could get a…
64 votesThis was added in version 10.1.2 – you’ll see the option in the Long Running Query alert configuration screen if you update to that version or later. Thanks for the suggestion (and also to everyone who added comments)!
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Alerts related to SQL Jobs should show the job name not the job Id
Process name: SQLAgent - TSQL JobStep (Job 0xECCD1234543A1FA439B02DE3CE12F139E : Step 1)
64 votes -
Support SAML for Web Single Sign-On (SSO)
SQL Monitor should be able to support Enterprise Single Sign-On using SAML. Is this on the roadmap?
57 votesMarking this as completed - support for OpenID Connect (OIDC) was added in v11.2 in June 2021 which enables SSO (and hence multi-factor auth) via a wide range of authentication providers.
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Job step failure - trigger an alert, even if the job itself doesn't fail
CONTEXT: If job step "On failure action" is set to "Go to next step" or "Go to step xy...." and the step fails, we would like to be alerted. The alert should be triggered immediately (as opposed to at the end of the job).
PROBLEM: SQL Monitor "Job failed" alert doesn't alert in such cases.
EXAMPLE SOLUTIONS:
• A new alert.
• Expanding options on the "Job failed" alert.53 votesAs of version 13.0.55 (February 27, 2024).
Job failing alerts can now be raised when any individual job step fails, even if the overall job succeeds.
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See more detail on Failed Agent Jobs
Present the detailed Step error message for Agent Job Failures. Currently shows the Job message, but not the error from the step that actually failed. This requires the user to open SSMS and drill down to find what caused the failure, instead of getting a head start from SQL Monitor.
53 votesThanks for the suggestion and votes. This was completed in version 7.1.2. I will close this – please let us know if you believe there are further improvements we could make.
Kind regards,
SQL Monitor Development Team -
Licensing Clusters
Since only one SQL server is active in an Active\Passive cluster, you should not require multiple Monitor licenses.
50 votesCurrently, we are offering a 50% discount for passive cluster nodes. We’ll continue to review our pricing structure over time.
Why do we charge money for passive nodes at all? Covering your passive nodes with monitoring is necessary to ensure that when a failover occurs, the passive node is in a healthy state, and the failover will be able to succeed. However, passive nodes don’t (usually) have complex performance characteristics, hence the discount.
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Traceflag 1222 for deadlocks
Use traceflag 1222 for deadlocks when monitoring SQL 2005+, and keep 1204 just for SQL 2000 instances. 1222 gives so much more information and doesn't cut off the SQL text.
48 votesHello,
We are pleased to annouce that this feature is now implemented as part of v4.0 release. Please check release notes for more details.
Thanks,
Priya -
Use (Group) Managed Service Account Credentials for Server Monitoring
Allow the use of managed service accounts (MSA and gMSA) as credentials when monitoring servers.
Given the high-level permissions required to fully monitor servers, this would provide a higher level of security to match.
48 votes -
SQL instances which are part of Availability Group does show if it primary or secondary in Global Dashboard
When SQL instances which are in Availability Groups are being monitored, the global dashboard lists both the primary & secondary node.
However though it does have 'AG' badge but it does not say which is primary or secondary.
While looking at the SQL monitor it will key that we know upfront which is the primary instance and also when alerting it should say primary or secondary in the subject line.48 votes -
Add an option to alias the server names.
In a multi-server environment it would be very helpful to be able to assign an alias to the server name. So at a glance you can see something like - 192.168.1.1 (Company A OLTP)
Merged idea: Longer descriptions for Servers, Databases etc
48 votesClosing this suggestion as the server alias work was completed in v5.2.2.
However, there is not currently a way to alias cluster/machine names, so if that is important please raise it as a new suggestion as we could look to address it if there is demand.
If you are experiencing problems with server aliases, please let us know via the support forums.
Thanks
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TempDB unexpected growth
I think it would be a good idea to have information about what caused random sudden growth in tempdb. I know we can see the DB size chart but theres no way to know what caused it.
Information that would be nice to be captured:
Table name
What query created table
What user created table47 votesTempDB metrics are now available on the server overview page from version 11.0.
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Exclude specific alerts from SQL SERVER ERROR LOG ENTRY alerts
We have certain tools (mainly infosec related) that generate a lot of entries in the SQL server error log as part of their normal operation creating a lot of alerts. The only way to identify these and thereby determine that they are 'expected' is to go into each alert individually and mark it as read. The ability to ignore certain errors based on error number, severity or message would add a lot of value to this feature.
47 votes -
Monitor Azure Managed Instances
Redgate Monitor still does not appear to fully support Azure Managed Instances. As our primary business is about to move across solely to Azure Managed Instances, this is now a seriously high priority for us.
We are heavy users of Redgate Monitor for our business, so this is now starting to be become a bit of a worry for us.
46 votesWe're now supporting Azure Managed Instances.
If there is something you think we're missing from this feature, please let us know at SQLMonitorFeedback@red-gate.com
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deadlock
Add the ability to customize deadlock alerts. I want to able to ignore alerts if the deadlock was on table XXXXX or produced by stored procedure YYYYYY
or have different alert levels depending on the database and table.45 votesThanks for this suggestion. We will close this now as there have been no new comments since we released the new filters.
However, please do raise new suggestions for anything you feel hasn’t been addressed, so we are able to consider them as we continue to improve SQL Monitor.
Thanks,
SQL Monitor Development Team
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