SQL diagnostic manager Secrets: Configuring Alerts

by Jul 3, 2014

There are a lot of features in SQL diagnostic manager. In this series, I plan to let you know about features that many users never find. In today’s article I want to talk about some of the capabilities around managing alerts that you may not have discovered.

Here are some the alert configurations options available:

Configurable Alert Thresholds – The alert thresholds provided by SQL diagnostic manager are highly configurable. You can configure different thresholds for each SQL Server instance. This accommodates the fact that each SQL Server may have its own required performance characteristics. For a production server you may want a critical alert when response time becomes slow whereas you may not care as much on a development server.

Alert Templates – The alert template feature lets you create sets of alert thresholds that you can apply to servers. For example, you might have different templates for production instances, and development instances. As you bring a new instance online you just pick the template to apply.

Baselines and Alert Recommendations – SQL diagnostic manager will make recommendations as to how to adjust the alert thresholds associated with a server. These recommendations come from a performance baseline that SQLdm creates for each server. By default, this baseline is based on the previous 5 weekdays of performance data. However, you can configure the exact date range, hours of the day and days of the week to use when calculating the baseline.

The Advanced Button – Several advanced features are hidden behind the Advanced button on the Alert configuration screen. You can customize the amount of time before an alert is raised. You may not want to get an alert on CPU Usage unless it has been busy for an extend period of time. By default, SQLdm will raise the alert as soon as the CPU threshold is reached. Another example of what is hidden behind this button is Alert Filters. Many alerts such as database alerts let you filter out databases that you are not interested in receiving alerts.

Alert Comments – You can add your own comments to alerts to be included in emails when an alert is raised. These allow you to provide instructions on how to respond to particular metrics and share knowledge across your company. To edit the comment for an alert

  • Right-click on an instance in the tree
  • Select Configure Alerts…
  • Select a metric.
  • On the right hand side there is a tab called “Comments”
  • Type in your own instructions on how to respond to the alert in the field.
  • To include a comment in alert emails just add the $(Comments) macro to the email message.

Hopefully this gives you some insight into some of the alert options available in SQL diagnostic manager. In upcoming articles, I will be introducing you to other gems hidden throughout the product. If you want to provide feedback on these options or have your own suggestions for topics or features, please visit and contribute to the SQL diagnostic manager Forum.