Alerts in SERVER Time Zone, NOT Browser!
Back in June 2016, I added the following to the now-defunct "Previous version" SQL Monitor Forum. The responder said it was in the Q for the next sprint, no promises as to its inclusion. DISAPPOINTMENT/FRUSTRATION continues to be experienced 6 MONTHS later!
Alerts at SERVER time, NOT UTC! PLEASE!
For the love of all DBA's with servers in multiple time zones (yes, this happens), for goodness sake STOP emailing the time of the Alert based on the SQL Monitor's Regional Settings.
In 2016, this statement from the page at https://documentation.red-gate.com/display/SM5/Alerts, is nigh on unbelievable, "All alert times in SQL Monitor are displayed in the local time of your web browser, regardless of where the Base monitor server or your monitored servers are located." And that's it? Nothing to say that, for example, "you can configure SQL Monitor to adjust the Alert Time to that of the monitored server, because SQL Monitor is smart enough to have extracted the local server time from a GETDATE()/GETUTCDATE()/gimme-the-time-zone-adjusted-'now'-time, when the Alert was detected".
I'm on Pacific US time (PDT or PST, depending on the Saving Time of year). Other Support personnel are in South Africa (UTC+1), others in the US, on EDT.
SQL Monitor - it's on Azure - oh look, UTC, forever and always.
2 SQL Instances on 2 servers on Eastern US time - Alerts in UTC - USELESS.
10 SQL Instances on 10 servers on Central US time - Alerts in UTC - USELESS.
2 SQL instances on 2 servers on Pacific US time - Alerts in UTC - USELESS.
1 SQL instance on UK time (which, as you aware, also has Daylight Saving Time!) - Alerts in UTC - USELESS when on DST.
2 SQL instances on 2 servers in Hong Kong - Alerts in UTC - USELESS.
Get my drift...
Is there ANY configuration in SQL Monitor that says something like, "Issue any Alert based on the Monitored Server's SQL server time"?
If so, please, where?
If not, why on earth not? I don't have time to keep converting UTC to DST-non-DST times, just so I can track down when the Alert actually happened!
Is there ANY help out there......?
UTC is mentioned ONCE in the v5 documentation, at https://documentation.red-gate.com/display/SM5/Finding+additional+metric+information Maybe searching for something other than UTC might get me the information, but for what? "Regional" - nope, zero results.
Perhaps "Alert" should be "Merely a suggestion of a problem that you'll have to work out when it actually happened at the place it happened..."
Frustration level def-con 5.
Re: Alerts at SERVER time, NOT UTC! PLEASE!
Postby russell.dunn » Thu Jun 23, 2016 12:03 am
Hi,
Just to let you know that the developers have put this onto the enhancement list for the next sprint, starting next week. I can't guarantee that it will make it into the product but they are going to at least discuss it and investigate the matter.
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Things are now WORSE!
Monitoring servers in SIX time zones from California, only 1 of which zones monitored is Pacific Time.
My laptop says the red-Alert occurred at 8 Dec 2016 15:20
The Azure machine that has SQL Monitor installed says 8 Dec 2016 23:20
The server is on Central Time, and who knows whether it is configured to recognize Daylight Saving Time shifts - they don't have to.
So, if I need to work out which of the hundreds of backups to pick from (5-minutely log backups, nightly diffs, weekly full) and make sure I get the right set.... GO FIGURE!
SQL Monitor can hold it's hand up for attention all it wants, but when the date-time information is as useless as a snowball in hell... Well, you can perhaps see my abject frustration that a simple thing such as "Show me the SQL Server Time (foo')" after all these years of the Product's existence, is driving me nuts!
Loyal to Red Gate I may be. But this....!!!
(PLEASE, don't dismiss this like the other two with time-zone-oriented requests, as "DECLINED (!!!) all results shown in Browser time" That is patently, and demonstrably useless to world-wide operations customers.)
Thanks for listening.
Stephen A
shared this idea
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Mark Freeman
commented
My browser is in the eastern US, EST/EDT, currently UTC-5. But next week, I think it will be UTC-4.
I monitor servers all around the globe. Having to do this extra time conversion on top of the one for whatever the current offset from UTC the Azure region housing the database I’m looking at is just one step more than my brain wants to handle. Many of those switch to/from Daylight Savings time during a different week than the US does, and go in a different direction, making this even more difficult. I would love to be able to configure a time zone for each server and then have an option to show all times for anything related to each server in that server’s local time.
As a possible half-way step, just add a setting that chooses between the current behavior and displaying everything in UTC.
And don't get me started about trying to define alert suppression windows when fighting with time zone calculations when I'm in one TZ, the base monitor is in another, and the server is in a third.