To my surprise many of the DBA's have not taken a holiday for quite a some time. Why? The answer was simple. Due to my job. What I realized is that DBAs do want to take a break from their work and enjoy time with their friends and family, however, they are not able to take breaks. This is not a healthy environment. You need to have a transparent system where you know what is going on in your server with a single glance and ease of access to more information. Sessions demonstrate the various details like: How many sessions are open? How many different computers are connected? How many active sessions there are? What is the SQL Server response time? The SQL Processes section demonstrates how many total system and user processes there are. We can also see blocked processes here as well. Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise makes it even easier for DBAs to go on vacation… and still keep an eye on the Servers!

1. Global Marketing
Spotlight on SQL Server – Granting
Vacations to SQL DBAs Everywhere
Dave Pinal
SQL Server Professional
Profuse SQL Writer
SQL Server DBA Professionals

2. SQLDBApros
This review is based on the SQL
Server performance monitoring
tool:
Spotlight on SQL Server.
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3. SQLDBApros
A few days ago I was visiting a large
Database Shop and I happened to
meet quite a few DBAs there.
After sharing a quick story of my
vacation, I asked the DBAs around
me about their own vacation.
To my surprise many of the
DBA's have not taken a holiday for
quite a some time.
Why? The answer was simple. Due to
my job.
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No vacation for you

4. SQLDBApros
“Forget about days off, almost
every other night I have to wake
up to fix something on my server,
I do not remember when I slept
6 hours without waking up to
see the server.”
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Excuses…
“I do not want to leave, I do not know the guy who will manage the
server behind me. He may not know where to look when things go
wrong.”
“I am new in the job and I have lots to learn. Honestly, when
something goes wrong, I have no clue where to look so I take lots of
time to figure things out.”

5. SQLDBApros5
This is not healthy
What I realized is that DBAs do want to take a break from their work
and enjoy time with their friends and family, however, they are not able
to take breaks.
This is not a healthy environment.
You need to have a transparent system where you know what is going
on in your server with a single glance and ease of access to more
information.
Speaking of healthy…See if your database is healthy
with our Free Healthcheck

6. SQLDBApros6
So I asked…
So I asked:
“Which one thing do you think if you had in your job, would
enable you to take a much needed vacation without any
stress or worry?”
And they answered:
“We need a single screen for all of our systems, that shows us
exactly what is going on with our server every single time.”
Sometimes there is no out of the box solution – we need to rely on
third party solutions or experts who know exactly what they are
doing…enter Spotlight on SQL Server.

7. SQLDBApros7
Spotlight on SQL Server
Here is the home screen of Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise:
You can see in the above image there are many sections for various
important monitoring areas of SQL Server.

8. SQLDBApros8
Sessions
This section demonstrates the various details about your sessions like:
– How many sessions are open?
– How many different computers are connected?
– How many active sessions there are?
– What is the SQL Server response time?
The one which attracted my attention was details about the response
time.
This shows the full round-trip response time for of a query
representative of general workload.
Download the Free Trial now

9. SQLDBApros9
SQL Processes
This section demonstrates how
many total system and user
processes there are. We can also
see blocked processes here as
well.
The best part is that we can right
click on any area of this home
screen and see further details.
I right-clicked on User Processes
and selected Session Details.
It immediately demonstrated the
display of various user sessions and
the script which was running in the
session.
Download the Free Trial now

10. SQLDBApros10
SQL Memory
This section demonstrates vital information about memory, like:
– How big is my buffer?
– How much of my cache is being used?
Procedure cache section – we don’t often track this when we are talking about
SQL and Memory.
Here is the image
of my computer's
Cache Size by
Object Type
which displays
various object
types and size
taken from my
memory cache.
Download the Free Trial now

11. SQLDBApros11
Disk Storage
This section displays IO activities, keeping in mind
database workload. We can see details about various data
files, file groups, database count and log files, but my
favorite section is MAX IO/Wait which is at the bottom of
the section. We can see various Wait types and upon
clicking details we can see Diagnose I/O Pressure as well.
There are animated movements of
packets, batches, logical reads, checkpoints,
etc. If we want to see any further details we
can just right click and see more details about
that particular object or activity.
Here is the best part – anywhere we need
focus or alerts, Spotlight on SQL Server
Enterprise will turn that section to red and will
send email alerts.
Download the Free Trial now

12. SQLDBApros
Spotlight on SQL Server
Enterprise makes it even
easier for DBAs to go on
vacation… and still keep an
eye on the Servers!
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Go on vacation
By using Spotlight Mobile which, by the way is FREE, you can:
– Monitor the health of you SQL Server environment via the Heatmap
– View an alarms list
– Get alarm details
– Have the ability to snooze or acknowledge alarms
– Anywhere, anytime, on any device!

13. SQLDBApros13
Download the fully functional
30 day FREE version and
take that much needed vacation!

14. Learn More
View Dave’s Original Post
Download FREE Tools
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