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RockSolid is a SQL Server Management tool that relieves the headache of managing mission critical SQL Server environments. RockSolid frees you from managing your SQL Server environment database by database or instance per instance. Managing your SQL Server environment is tedious and time consuming and in medium to large environments it is impossible to effectively manage the thousands of diverse databases across your organizations’ network.
RockSolid allows you to manage your environment from a holistic Best Practice perspective. Organisations “best practices” for instances and databases are defined in terms of performance, security, recoverability and maintenance. RockSolid takes over the function of implementing and enforcing these best practices across the entire SQL Server environment.
Multiple best practice sets may exist for different classes of instances and databases, such as Production, Test, Development, BI and VLDB. RockSolid caters for this with its Best Practice Auto Routing technology. This allows you to define criteria that automatically routes databases to the appropriate best practice sets. These criteria may be based on database and instance naming standards, databases size and so on. The routing is dynamic and as databases grow over time they may move between different best practice sets, based on your criteria.
If your defined best practices change, then the changes are automatically implemented in your environment across all instances managed by RockSolid. |
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RockSolid is a complete monitoring facility for SQL Server. It has been built from the ground up to collect all the relevant and specialised information from SQL Server that is required to effectively manage and maintain SQL Server instances. Information collected by RockSolid includes: Windows Performance counters, SQL Server query traces, SQL Server error logs, job execution history, instance and database configurations, database growth, I/O statistics, disk space and availability.
Eventing is RockSolid’s term for recording everything of importance that has occurred within an Instance or database. These events are often a normal part of operations of a SQL Server instance and at the time are of little concern or relevance. However during performance investigations an accurate audit of events that have led up to a point in time is invaluable when isolating the root cause of such issues. This information is some of the most important provided by RockSolid. Examples of events include: database creation, backup completing, new login created, stored procedure code changed, index created, statistics updated, data file growth and drop in transactions per second
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Data is fed to the RockSolid Server via the RockSolid Agents deployed on the local network of the SQL Server instances (see deployment models). In real time, the RockSolid Analysis engine continuously inspects the monitoring feed to identify anything that is cause for concern and should result in a service request being raised. Real Time Analysis includes:
Reactive Analysis such as disk space low, SQL Server error, drop in transactions per second, high CPU usage, poor query performance, long blocking queues,
Proactive Analysis such as backups not completing, change of configuration violating best practices
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| 3. Service Request Management |
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A service request is a basic unit in RockSolid, it is an event which requires further investigation. RockSolid includes a comprehensive web based service request management system which is used to manage issues generated by RockSolid Analysis, as well as manually generated service requests. The service request management tool is specifically designed for SQL Server management teams, from a single DBA to multiple teams of DBA’s across different time zones.
RockSolid includes complete notification and escalation functions that allow service requests to be routed to different DBA teams depending on time of day, instance, issue type and severity and includes routing to teams in different time zones. RockSolid supports notification of issues to DBAs via email and SMS.
RockSolid includes sophisticated Change Control functions that allow DBA’s, system owners, application owners or IT management to automatically request change approval before changes are cleared for implementation. This change control system can be used for service requests that are manually or automatically raised, as well as those that are manually or automatically resolved.
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RockSolid can automatically attempt to resolve service requests based on what it is allowed to do, and the manner in which it is allowed to do it. If RockSolid cannot automatically resolve service requests, then it can escalate the service requests to the DBA team for manual resolution.
RockSolid also carries our Automated Database Maintenance using pre-defined maintenance windows. The DBA team configures when database maintenance windows are allowed to occur within an environment. These windows can range from a few minutes to several hours depending on the nature of the associated databases. RockSolid will use whatever window is available to its full potential including, automatically maintaining indexes, expanding data files, updating statistics and running integrity checks. The RockSolid analysis algorithm examines the size and frequency of maintenance windows and determines the most effective use of these windows. Additionally if not enough time for effective database maintenance is allocated, this will be raised to the DBA team
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RockSolid has a report library with dozens of reports in the following categories, Performance, System Management, Security, Recovery and Capacity Planning. These reports leverage the collected data and associated analysis to provide the ability to plan, optimize and effectively manage SQL Server environments. This report library includes reports such as performance trends, query performance tuning, capacity planning, projection reports, consolidation reports, backup & recovery, security management, management summaries, best practice compliance and availability Report
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