SQL SERVER 2008

466 ❘ CHAPTER 16 DELIVERING MANAGEABILITY AND PERFORMANCE
When creating overrides, it is useful to store these outside the “sealed” management packs that are
provided by Microsoft. This provides isolation between the pre-packaged, downloaded management
packs and anything that is organization or server specifi c. Defi ne an organization standard for naming
the management packs where overrides are saved — for example, you could create a new MP for
the Windows Server 2008 R2 customizations and name it Windows Server 2008 R2 — Overrides.
This clearly delimits the in-box and custom functionality.
Importing Management Packs
The Windows and SQL Server management packs (MPs) are published by Microsoft, version controlled,
and released for public consumption free of charge. Download the latest version and import
it into SCOM. Any dependencies between management packs are indicated at the time of import.
The MP download includes a Word document that is a guide to describe the setup process, rules,
and monitors, and contains any last-minute breaking changes.
The import/export functionality can also be used as a backup and recovery method for custom management
packs in case a management pack rollback is required.
SCOM AND SQL AGENT
By default, the SCOM alerts will alert only on job failure. If there is a step failure
but the “On failure” job step is set to continue, then no alert is raised. This is the
out-of-the-box behavior and may be changed if required.
Management Pack Authoring
The greatest value derived from any monitoring process is the creation of health checks that identify
key aspects of the application platform and provide detailed data collection. As such, SCOM is a
great platform to develop this custom monitoring in the form of management pack authoring.
One such example for SQL Server is checking for the most recent full backup, a feature that isn’t
included out-of-the-box. This is a good example in which SCOM can alert based on SQL Agent job
failures; however, in some situations SQL Agent is disabled, the database maintenance job schedule
becomes disabled, or for some reason the backup job does not run. Without proactive monitoring to
check for the last good backup, situations like these could continue unnoticed for some time. This
is a good scenario in which authoring a custom monitor to check for the backup event would be
useful.
SUMMARY
This chapter provided an overview of manageability in SQL Server 2012. You learned about several
enhancements, including improvements to the database restore wizard, contained databases, SQL
Server Management Studio functionality, and the Database Tuning Advisor.