Monitoring Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Opsview

Monitoring Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Opsview

Tuesday, 07 August 2012 © Opsview Ltd. Commercial in Confidence 2

Introduction
• This blog post takes a deep-dive into monitoring
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Opsview V4. In order to
monitor MS SQL 2008 (known hereon as SQL2K8), we will
have to leverage Opsview’s ability to support Nagios
plugins which can be found on the Exchange.Nagios.org
website.

• If you don’t already have Opsview installed, visit our
website and download Opsview Core (free), Opsview
Pro (30 day trial) or request a trial to Opsview
Enterprise.

3
Tuesday, 07 August 2012 © Opsview Ltd. Commercial in Confidence

Initial Setup
• First we will need to monitor a few services. To do this
we can use the Opsview guide “Monitoring Windows
Services”.
• The main 3 SQL services we may wish to monitor are:
• MSSQLSERVER – “SQL Service server”
• SQLSERVERAGENT – “SQL Server agent”
• SQLBrowser – “SQL Server Browser”

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Configuration
• Firstly login to Opsview and navigate to “SETTINGS >
SERVICE CHECKS” and scroll down to “Database - MS SQL
Server” where we can find a few pre-configured checks.
• We will need to modify these checks to include the
correct service names (as above). For example, the
service check for “MS SQL Server Service” should have
arguments of:

“ -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c nsc_checkservicestate -a 'ShowAll
MSSQLSERVER=started' ”

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Configuration
• Once these services have been created, we
should have the following:
Name Arguments
MS SQL Agent Service check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c
nsc_checkservicestate -a 'ShowAll
SQLSERVERAGENT=started'

MS SQL Browser check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c
SQLBrowser=started'

MS SQL Server Listener check_tcp -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -p 1433 -w 2 -c 5

MS SQL Server Service check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c
MSSQLSERVER=started'

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Configuration
• Now we have the basic checks, lets add more “in-depth”
monitoring.
• In order to do this, we are going to need a plugin from
the Nagios Exchange called “Check MSSQL Database
Stats”, from the link here.
• Download the .py script, and copy it to the folder
/usr/local/nagios/libexec.
• Once there, do:
“chown nagios:nagios check_mssql_database.py”,

• then
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Configuration
“chmod 755 check_mssql_database.py”.

• This will now show up in our service checks as a plugin.
• In order to run the plugin on the platform, we will need
to install a small plugin called “pymssql”. To do this,
follow the instructions below:

UBUNTU/DEBIAN: sudo apt-get install python-pymssql RHEL: yum
install pymssql (Some repos have it python-pymssql)

Once this plugin is installed, we can run a check on our MS
SQL server to make sure we can access it. To do this, run a
command similar to the one below, but with your
information added:
8

Configuration
./check_mssql_database.py -H ipaddress -U username -P password -T
_Total -p 1433

• This command works as follows:
• “-H” is the ip address or hostname of the server on which
the MS SQL Server 2008 install resides. Important: the
username and password (-U and –P respectively) are
the”SQL SERVER AUTHENTICATION” login details, and
not the “Windows authentication” login details.

9

Configuration
• Generally, the admin username will be “sa” for example.
–T specifies the table name; with the operator “_Total”
telling the query to look at all tables, and finally, -p
specifies the port number – generally 1433.

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Configuration
• If the command works, you should see the following
output:

OK:Time to connect is 0.004s|Time_to_connect=0.004s;;;;

• If not, you may need to review the login details, if you
see something similar to the following:

CRITICAL:Unable to access SQL Server.

• As mentioned, the above output was obtained by using
the AD credentials and not the SQL server credentials to
try and access the box.
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Configuration
• Once we have the “OK..” message, we can begin to query
the SQL server from within Opsview. So now we can login
to Opsview again (if closed), and begin to create our
service checks.
• To do this, go to “SETTINGS > SERVICE CHECKS” and click
the plus sign in the top left corner.
• In this example, we are going to monitor the size of the
database. To do this, use the plugin we just installed, and
add the arguments, similar to those ran earlier, but with
the “-H $HOSTADDRESS$” variable, and the
%DATABASE% attribute, for scalability. We'll explain these
later on in the guide.
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Configuration

• With the full arguments field reading:

-H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! -T %DATABASE% -p 1433 -
-datasize -w 70000 -c 99000

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Configuration
• The key differentiator from hereon are the options after
“-p 1433..”. We are specifying here we want to monitor “-
-datasize” (so size of DB), and that we want to be warned
if we go above 70000KB, (yellow alert in Opsview) and
critical alert on 99000KB or more (Red in Opsview). For
the full list of operators, see the bottom of this guide.
• Now we have created our service check (we can do the
above for all the operators, where applicable), we now
need to add them to our MS SQL host. But before we can
do that, we need to add the attribute “%DATABASE%”
first.
• To do this, go to “SETTINGS > Attributes” and click the
plus sign

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Configuration
• In the “Name” box, enter “DATABASE”, and click “submit
changes”, it is that simple!

• Next, we must create this host via “SETTINGS > HOST”
and click the “plus” sign at the top left.
• Populate all the fields appropriately, using the IP address
of the server on which the SQL DB is running on.
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Configuration
• Once done, click onto the “MONITORS” tab. Here is
where we will assign our new service checks to our host,
as below:

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Configuration
• Once we have added our monitors, click “ATTRIBUTES”,
and select in the dropdown box our new attribute,
“DATABASE”.
• In the value field, enter the name of your database - or if
you want to monitor all, we can use the “_Total”
operator.
• Finally, click submit, and now have our SQL Server 2008
host created, with the attribute specified, and all our
new service checks enabled.

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Configuration
• Now this is done, we just need to reload opsview due to
the configuration changes using “SETTINGS -> APPLY
CHANGES”

• And Opsview will reload, your new host will be available
and will be monitoring your new service checks, as on
the following slide (with a lot more service checks):

18

Configuration

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Reference:
• On the following slide are the options which can be
applied to the command, as per the output of the
command ./check_mssql_database.py -h I have also
added a “arguments” section.

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Reference
Option Arguments Notes
--activetrans -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! Monitors # of active transactions,
-T %DATABASE% -p 1433 --activetrans -w warns on over 5, and critical on
5 -c 10 over 10 transactions.
--datasize -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! Monitors size of database, warns
-T %DATABASE% -p 1433 --datasize -w on over 70000kb, critical on
70000 -c 99000
99000Kb
--logcachehit -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! Monitors log cache hit in %. Less
-T %DATABASE% -p 1433 --logcachehit -w than 50% gives us critical, less
75: -c 50:
than 75% gives warning.
--logwait H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! - In .ms, how long it takes to
T %DATABASE% -p 1433 --logwait -w 30 -c retrieve logs.
50

--loggrowths -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! Check Log Growths
-T %DATABASE% -p 1433 --loggrowths -w 5
-c 10

--time2connect -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P password11! Time in .ms to connect to DB.
-T %DATABASE% -p 1433 --time2connect -w
0010 -c 0050

--transpsec -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -U sa -P
password11! -T %DATABASE% -p
1433 --transpsec -w 20 -c 30

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About Opsview
Opsview delivers a single unified view of the health of all your distributed physical,
virtual and hybrid cloud systems.

We give DevOps staff all the tools they need to get their jobs done faster, easier and
for less.

• Opsview Enterprise offers large enterprises (+100 devices) and MSPs a certified,
professionally supported system with enhanced functionality such as dynamic
dashboards and reports

• SMEs looking for feature-rich dashboards to monitor the performance of their on-
premise, virtualized or cloud apps choose Opsview Pro

• Opsview Core is our free, open source monitoring tool - you can test and
customize it how you want

www.opsview.com
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Monitoring Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Opsview

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