Suggestions
Welcome to the Redgate SQL Monitor feature suggestions list. Tell us how we can improve SQL Monitor by voting on these suggestions or by submitting your own ideas.
This is the easiest way to make an impact on SQL 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 — often the SQL Monitor team will initially stay quiet about new suggestions to see what you have to say!
If you have any questions visit the SQL Monitor forum.
182 results found
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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 -
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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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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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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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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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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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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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 -
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 -
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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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 -
add the ability to have multiple users
It would be benefical to have an admin account that can allow config changes to be made and also a "guest" user which could review the data that was collected but not modifiy the settings.
44 votes -
Include Stored Procedure performance
Include which stored procedures executed have high CPU, memory utilization, IO consumption. Also, include top wait types on Global Overview in addition to CPU and Memory
43 votesThe most performance-relevant stored procedures and ad-hoc queries can be inspected with the “Performance Diagnostics” feature on the Instance and Database Overview screens. This information is also replicated in the Performance section of the alert details pages
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Have ability to sort list of databases on SQL Instance overview
It might be helpful to have the ability to sort these by name, esp. when this list happens to be quite long. It seems like under the current design they are sorted by database ID.
I have to scroll past 50+ db's to see the remaining info on the UI - can this be improved? Collapsing the list or adding some filtering, e.g. filter to limit to x# which is then changeable by page index, or filter by other than OK status
43 votesThis list is sortable as of SQL Monitor 4.0 (it is also truncated by default, making it easier to scroll past it)
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Block Specific Deadlocks by Lock Details
We've just updated to SQL Monitor 6. We was hoping there was a feature in this to change alert settings for Deadlocks with specific lock details rather than just all Deadklocks.
For example
we don't want email alerts on: Deadlock 'object: ReportServerTempDB.dbo.SessionLock, lock mode: Exclusive (X), index: IDX_SessionLockHowever we wish to receive emails when: Deadlock 'dbid: 6, object id: 72057594038845440, index id: (9bf78693a4b4)'
However this feature doesn't exist. Would be great to have added to an update in the near future!
42 votesThanks for this suggestion and the comments.
As previously announced, since version 8.0.22 (released November 13th, 2018) Deadlock (XE) alerts can now be filtered by database, login name & resource, and victimless (eg Exchange Event) deadlocks are excluded by default.
We are marking this as complete, but please do let us know if you have any further feedback.
Thanks,
SQL Monitor Development Team -
Select multiple counters for Analysis
It would be helpful to see and compare multiple counters for an object in the Analysis tab.
41 votesSQL Monitor v 3.3 has been released. This release contains ability to display multiple metrics in the same Analysis graph to identify correlations and unusual patterns of behavior more easily.
Thanks
SQL Monitor Development Team
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