April 30, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I am a SQL Server DBA and trying to locate a good documentation tool for both the operating system and SQL Server 2005. My coworker is an Oracle DBA, and he uses RDA "Remote Diagnostic Agent" to obtain valuable operating system and database information. I don't recall a tool like that for the Windows environment.
Can someone point me to some tools that provide informative Operating system and SQL Server documentation? Preferably, a tool that encompasses both OS and SQL?
Thanks
Greg G.
April 30, 2008 at 8:19 pm
How about Profiler in SQL 2005 and PerfMon in OS?
May 1, 2008 at 8:10 am
I am looking for something that completely documents database and operating system. Profiler and Perfmon provide activity, but I am looking for a periodic run to keep server/database documentation current.
For example:
No of CPUs (Cores)
No of Drive Partitions
Amt of Memory
Windows updates
Firmware
Devices
SQL Server configuration info
databases
tables
dependencies
etc...
I was hoping to find a tool that could provide all of this information via. HTML output and something that I could provide our operations team.
Thanks
Greg
May 1, 2008 at 8:14 am
Red gate have a SQL Doc tool that may help with your problem...
http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Doc/index.htm
Gethyn Elliswww.gethynellis.com
May 1, 2008 at 8:53 am
Red GAte's tool (I work for Red Gate) only does databases, not servers.
ApexSQL has a doc tool, and there are a few more (SQL Scribe, etc, search SQL Server documentation software or utility).
For the Windows side, I'm not sure what would work. Keeping track of that stuff would be good, but I'm not sure where you'd do it. Might be best writing a set of scripts to grab stuff and store it in text files, dated for the run.
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May 1, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Sounds like a good use for the Health and History Tool to me
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=eedd10d6-75f7-4763-86de-d2347b8b5f89
Has a set of canned reports that will show you, hardware, OS patchs, SQL Instance info. It forces you into using Reporting Services and has no cost. Check it out...
Bill Wunder
May 2, 2008 at 6:54 am
This is the server-side only, but have you thought of "system information" tools?
PCWizard (http://www.cpuid.com/pcwizard.php)
SIW (http://www.gtopala.com/)
WinAudit (http://pxserver.com/WinAudit.htm)
You can even save the information in various formats (xml, csv, html, etc).
Don't forget to test how "intense" the data gathering is, your server may "feel" it, depending on how much information you try to collect.
May 2, 2008 at 10:06 am
There are two free tools that will do this for you:
SYDI[/url] is a free VBScript that writes a substantial amount of system information to XML files. You can bulk insert the XML into a 2005 database and then use XQuery to build custom reports.
There's also the SQL Health and History tool from Microsoft. In my opinion it requires more setup time than and does not capture as much system information as SYDI. SQLH2, however, is capable of capturing performance monitor metrics that you can use to build performance baselines. (FWIW the reports that come with SQLH2 are difficult to navigate through if you manage a lot of servers. I've resorted to writing my own set of queries to get at the performance data and present it in a format that's more useful to me).
Kendal Van Dyke
May 2, 2008 at 10:09 am
May 2, 2008 at 11:02 am
I use the windows "srvinfo" command, it gives you all applied updates and who installed them, version of windows, all services stopped and started, drives available and there sizes, the system uptime, and much more.
I believe you will need to install windows rktools for this utility.
Batch file example:
@echo off
for /f "delims=" %%a in (C:\SQL\serverlist.txt) do (
for /f "delims=" %%b in ('srvinfo \\%%a^|find "$"') do (
>>C:\SQL\Disk_Sizes\DiskSize.xls echo \\%%a %%b
)
)
ren C:\SQL\Disk_Sizes\DiskSize.xls DiskSize_%date:~-4,4%%date:~-7,2%%date:~-10,2%.xls
What this does is looks for the server names in "serverlist.txt" then applies it to the "srvinfo" command with a "\\" before it and filters out all data with a "$".
Example:
\\LHUOADPsspid C$ NTFS 34684 29980 4704
\\LHUOADPsspid D$ NTFS 104182 61797 42385
\\LKWADPssSinb C$ NTFS 19092 14037 5055
\\LHUOMGTttttt C$ NTFS 70006 39512 30494
I use this batch to show all of my servers with what drive and there space available, then the script renames it with todays date so I can run it once a day before I get into work and not worry about name conflicts. I then have another script xcopy it to my file server and archive the xls for reviewing.
I also use it for the system uptime, updates applied, and much more. If you dont have any $ in budget for a tool then this might help you out.
:w00t:
May 31, 2008 at 2:44 pm
SqlSpec is a tool I wrote for documenting databases. It supports all major DBMS platforms, including SQL Server and Oracle.
for collecting windows and hardware information, there are lots of tools available. MS has one called the AppCompat toolkit which will take an inventory of all the machines on a network:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/desktopdeployment/bb414773.aspx
---------------------------------------
elsasoft.org
May 31, 2008 at 3:41 pm
MPS Reports... it's what Microsoft Premier Support almost always has you run when you've got an issue. We basically run the appropriate one as we're placing the call so we have the .CAB file(s) ready to go.
You might take a look and see if the type of information it gathers is on par with what you're looking for. Since MPS Reports is really a scripted process, you can take apart the scripts and see how Microsoft captures the information. Then you can easily build your own. This will almost certainly capture what the OS sees with respect to hardware. If you want more than that, you may look at the management software for the type of servers you have, for instance SIM for HP or Director for IBM (I don't know what Dell's is). Usually that information is stored in a back-end database which can be queried.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
June 1, 2008 at 8:52 pm
May take a look "Microsoft System Center"
"Solutions for SQL Server" is included.
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/datasheets.aspx
Just found "Microsoft System Center gets cross-platform support" (unix/linux)
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/en/us/news-reviews.aspx
June 2, 2008 at 5:35 am
Symantec's newly acquired Altiris can show all the items you need in one web report that you would need to create.
Altiris can run on a schedule or track changes over time.
June 2, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Altiris and System Center can certainly output the OS information and possibly the server-level SQL Server information, but neither are cheap and require a license per server in addition to the "console" license. Also, I don't think either will do at the database level.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
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