10 SQL Alerts Best Practices

SQL Server Alerts are a great way to monitor your database for potential problems. By setting up alerts, you can be notified of issues as they happen, so you can take action to resolve them quickly.

However, setting up too many alerts can be just as bad as not having any at all. You don’t want to be bombarded with notifications, or miss important ones because they got lost in the noise.

In this article, we’ll discuss 10 SQL Alerts best practices that you can use to strike the right balance. By following these best practices, you can set up alerts that are both effective and efficient.

1. Use a dedicated SQL Server instance for the SSISDB database

The SSISDB database stores all the information about your SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages. This includes things like package execution history, logging, and performance data.

Because of this, the SSISDB database can get quite large, and it can impact the performance of your SQL Server instance if it’s not on a dedicated server.

Additionally, having the SSISDB database on a dedicated server will make it easier to manage and troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

2. Create a separate maintenance plan to backup the SSISDB database

The SSISDB database stores all the information for your SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages. This includes things like package configurations, logging, and performance data. If you lose this database, you lose all that information and have to start from scratch.

Creating a separate maintenance plan just for backing up the SSISDB database ensures that it gets backed up on a regular basis. This way, if something does happen to the database, you have a recent backup to restore from.

3. Enable automatic cleanup of execution history in the SSIS Catalog

The SSIS Catalog stores execution history for all packages that have been run. By default, this history is kept forever. However, this can quickly lead to the catalog becoming very large, which can impact performance and make it difficult to manage.

To avoid this issue, you should enable automatic cleanup of execution history. This will ensure that only a certain number of executions are kept, and older executions are purged automatically. This will keep the catalog size manageable and improve performance.

4. Enable logging and use log providers to capture events from packages

When an error or unexpected condition occurs in a package, the first thing you’ll want to do is check the logs to see what happened. If logging isn’t enabled, there will be no record of what occurred, making it much harder to troubleshoot and fix the problem.

There are many different log providers available, so you can choose the one that best fits your needs. Some providers even offer features like email alerts, so you can be notified immediately when an error occurs.

Enabling logging and using log providers is an essential best practice for SQL alerts because it helps you troubleshoot problems more quickly and effectively.

5. Configure email notifications for failures on your packages

If a package fails, it’s likely that something went wrong with the data inside of it. This could be due to bad data, or it could be due to an issue with the package itself. Either way, you need to be notified so that you can investigate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Configuring email notifications for package failures is easy to do in SQL Server Management Studio. Simply right-click on the package, select “Properties,” and then select the “Notifications” tab. From here, you can add a new notification, and select “When the package fails” as the event type.

Be sure to enter a valid email address in the “To” field, so that you’ll actually receive the notification. You can also add multiple email addresses by separating them with a semi-colon.

6. Set up alerts for package failures

If a package fails, it can cause data loss or corruption. In some cases, it might even take the entire database offline. So, it’s important to be alerted as soon as a package failure occurs, so you can take action to prevent any further damage.

There are two ways to set up alerts for package failures. The first is to use SQL Server’s built-in functionality. The second is to use a third-party tool, like Redgate’s SQL Monitor.

If you use SQL Server’s built-in functionality, you’ll need to create an Extended Events session. This can be done using SQL Server Management Studio or T-SQL. Once the session is created, you’ll need to add an alert to notify you when a package fails.

If you use a third-party tool like SQL Monitor, you’ll need to install the software and then configure it to send alerts for package failures. SQL Monitor will also give you more information about why the package failed, which can be helpful in troubleshooting the issue.

7. Monitor the SSIS server using Performance Monitor counters

The SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) server is a critical component of the SQL Server environment, and it’s important to monitor its performance to ensure that it’s running optimally. By monitoring the SSIS server using Performance Monitor counters, you can identify potential problems early on and take corrective action before they cause major issues.

There are a number of different Performance Monitor counters that you can use to monitor the SSIS server, but some of the most important ones include the “Buffer Memory” counter and the “Package Execution” counter.

Monitoring the SSIS server using Performance Monitor counters is an important best practice because it can help you avoid problems before they occur. By monitoring the server closely, you can identify potential issues early on and take corrective action to prevent them from becoming major problems.

8. Monitor the SSIS server using Dynamic Management Views (DMVs)

The SSIS server is a critical component of the SQL Server environment, and it’s important to keep an eye on its performance. By monitoring the SSIS server using DMVs, you can quickly identify any potential problems and take corrective action before they cause serious issues.

DMVs provide a wealth of information about the SSIS server, including its current state, recent activity, and performance data. This information can be used to troubleshoot problems, optimize performance, and plan for future capacity needs.

Monitoring the SSIS server using DMVs is a best practice that can help you avoid serious problems and keep your SQL Server environment running smoothly.

9. Monitor the SSIS server using Extended Events

Extended Events is a feature in SQL Server that lets you collect data about events that occur in the server. This data can be used to troubleshoot and performance tune the server.

When you’re setting up Extended Events for monitoring SSIS, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, you need to decide what events you want to capture. Second, you need to set up the session so that it captures the events you’re interested in.

Third, you need to make sure that the data collected by the Extended Events session is stored somewhere so that you can analyze it later. And fourth, you need to create an alert that will notify you when something interesting happens in the Extended Events data.

Creating an Extended Events session and configuring it to capture the right events is beyond the scope of this article. But I’ll show you how to create an alert that will notify you when the SSIS server experiences an error.

To do this, we’ll use the sys.sp_server_diagnostics system stored procedure. This procedure collects diagnostic information about the SQL Server instance and stores it in a table. We can use this procedure to query the Extended Events data and raise an alert when an error occurs.

Here’s the code to create the alert:

“`sql
USE msdb ;
GO

— Create the alert
EXEC sp_add_alert @name=N’SSIS Error’,
@message_id=0,
@severity=0,
@enabled=1,
@delay_between_responses=0,
@include_event_description_in=1,
@category_name=N'[Uncategorized]’,
@job_id=N’00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000′ ;
GO

— Add a response to the alert
EXEC sp_add_alert_response @alert_name=N’SSIS Error’,
@notify_level=0,
@notification_message=N’An error has occurred in the SSIS server.’,
@response_type=1 ;
GO
“`

This

10. Monitor the SSIS server using SQL Server Agent Alerts

The SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) server is responsible for a lot of the ETL process. As such, it’s important to be aware of any issues that may arise with it. By setting up SQL Server Agent Alerts, you can be notified immediately if there are any problems with the SSIS server, so you can take action to fix them quickly.

To set up SQL Server Agent Alerts, open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the SSIS server. Then, expand the “SQL Server Agent” node in the left-hand pane and click on “Alerts”. In the right-hand pane, click on the “New Alert…” button.

Enter a name for the alert and select when it should trigger. For example, you might want to trigger the alert when the SSIS server is down or when an error occurs. You can also specify who should be notified when the alert triggers.

Click “OK” to save the alert. Repeat this process for any other alerts you want to set up.