virtualDBA

Release notes.

Full access to the source code!

virtualDBA v3.7.0 Update

We’re still working hard on getting this new version available as soon as possible but we have opted to delay the release until we can incorporate some great ideas/feedback from a number of our IT friends in India and the US.

Their input should provide some valuable functionality/fixes to all virtualDBA users so a big thank you to them in advance.

Remember, it’s your input counts!

Mark J. Wylie
eleven27

Integrated Windows Service Monitoring/Alerting

If you’re a smaller company with no current service state monitoring, you can now enable this option directly in virtualDBA.  Do you have have custom application services running on remote hosts?  If so, let virtualDBA alert you when they are down!

SQL Agent Job Analysis/Trending

Introduced a new process that will track and report on the trending of your application (or any other) SQL Agent jobs on an instance of SQL Server. Get aggregated run-time statistics, percent failure/success ratios, etc for any of your scheduled jobs.

Query memory and STC monitoring

Track per query memory allocation and Subtree Costs (STC) and send alerts on predefined threshold values.  If a query is sorting in TempDB outside of it’s granted memory space have virtualDBA log it and notify you.  If a query has a high STC value, have virtualDBA log it and notify you.  If a query is requesting a large amount of memory space have virtualDBA log it and notify you.  Starting to see the trend here?

A revamped Query Statistics Monitor

On a loaded system (>1200 batch request/sec), we are seeing some of the query statistics monitors taking over 15 sec to complete.  Our code revisions should help to alleviate this situation.

Further performance improvements across all monitoring processes.

We’re always trying to improve the performance of every virtualDBA process to ensure that is uses the minimal amount of server resources as possible.

There are a few more cool new features we will be adding but we’ll keep those under wraps until the release!

Stay Tuned!

The virtualDBA project is now in full swing.  If you want to be a part of this, please register with our online forums and get in touch with us via project@virtualdba.ca.

Check out the following for more information:

If you’re and existing virtualDBA user, you already know that there are no proprietary executables or DLL files used by virtualDBA – it’s just a single database.  When we release upgrades to virtualDBA, how do you get them onto to your systems?

If you haven’t setup any custom configuration options and you don’t need to maintain any of the maintenance, monitoring or auditing history, you can simply restore the new virtualDBA database and re-run the setup procedure – that’s it!

If you want to maintain all of your settings and history, you would need to manually export all of the table data, install the new virtualDBA, then import all of your data.  This can be both time consuming and complex given the changes to the virtualDBA schema.

To make this process easier, we are currently working on a virtualDBA Upgrade Assistant that will do all of the work for you!

It’s just a series of SQL scripts packaged together into 2 separate EXE files – one export and one import.  We’ll even give you access to all of the source code so that you can modify/run the scripts manually outside of the EXE files if you wish.

We’re hoping to have this available in the next few weeks and as always, we will keep you updated as things progress.

Version 3.6.0 of virtualDBA is now available for download!

We’re almost there!

virtualDBA v3.6.0 should be available later this week.

Ever notice how Google changes their logo on specific dates?  Our new Reporting Module overrides will now allow you to do the same!  Change your logo, fonts, colors, email distribution list, etc for any report on any day you like.  Just add an override record and virtualDBA will do the rest!

This is just one of the cool features we have added in the new version.  We will provide a complete listing of fixes/upgrades/etc. in our Version History once the product is released.

Stay tuned!

We’re still adding content to our new Forums section and we invite you to do the same.  If you have a few minutes to spare, please take the time to register and add your own content to the site.  Once again, it’s your input that counts!

Our Forums are now online!

You can access them at: http://forums.virtualdba.ca

Over the next few weeks we will be making a few changes here and there but we still invite you to register and contribute to the virtualDBA community.

Ask questions, provide feedback/comments, post some tips-and-tricks, anything you want!

virtualDBA version 3.6 is coming!

This new version contains a number of product fixes however it will also include a number of cool new features that you can enable for your environments.

We are targetting a July release date and we will keep you posted. 

Check back soon for updates!