Released: Public Preview for System Center Management Packs for SQL Server and Dashboards

We are getting ready to update the SQL Server Management Packs. Please install and use this public preview and send us your feedback (sqlmpsfeedback@microsoft.com)! We appreciate the time and effort you spend on these previews which make the final product so much better. There are some bug fixes and great performance improvements for the dashboards which should make this a great release for you.

Please download at:

Microsoft System Center Management Packs (Community Technical Preview 2) for SQL Server

Included in the download are:

  • Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2008/2008 R2/2012 (6.7.5.0)
  • Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2014 (6.7.5.0)
  • Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2016 (6.7.5.0)
  • Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server Dashboards (6.7.5.0)

New SQL Server 2008/2008 R2/2012 MP Features and Fixes

  • Added support for databases stored on SMB Shares
  • Fixed error logging in a script for Blocking Sessions monitor
  • Removed files of SQL 2005 MP from the installer since this MP is no longer supported
  • Fixed issue: CPU Usage monitor & rule does not work for SQL Server cluster instance
  • Fixed issue: connection to an SQL Server instance is not closing when the destination was wrong
  • Fixed Non-Readable Replica detection (Always On)
  • Made detection condition stricter for DB User Policy event-based discovery: added management group name
  • Made detection condition stricter for Script Failed alerting rule: added management group name
  • Added support for configurations where computer host names are longer than 15 symbols
  • Added “Event ID” to descriptions of all the alerts generated by the alerting rules
  • Deprecated “Run As Account does not exist on the target system, or does not have enough permissions” rule
  • Added 2 rules for alerts generating when there are problems with execution of the monitoring workflows scripts on the following agents: “MSSQL: Monitoring failed” and “MSSQL: Monitoring warning”
  • Added “MSSQL 20XX: Discovery warning” rules to generate alerts when there are non-critical problems with execution of the discovery scripts (warning events in the Operations Manager log)
  • Changed “MSSQL 20XX: Discovery failed” rules to generate alerts for only critical errors during executing discovery scripts
  • Improved error logging in the MP scripts
  • Fixed some issues in the scripts, which could lead to unstable work with WMI
  • Updated the visualization library

New SQL Server 2014/2016 MP Features and Fixes

  • Disabled Memory-Optimized Data Garbage Collection Fill Factor monitor and rule by default
  • Disabled Memory-Optimized Data workflows for all SQL Server instances, except for Developer, Enterprise, and Evaluation editions
  • Fixed issue: CPU Usage monitor & rule does not work for SQL Server cluster instance
  • Fixed issue: connection to an SQL Server instance is not closing when the destination was wrong
  • Fixed issue: in some cases, Set Database Online/Offline tasks do not work for databases of SQL Server 2016 cluster instance
  • Made detection condition stricter for DB User Policy event-based discovery: added management group name
  • Made detection condition stricter for Script Failed alerting rule: added management group name
  • Added support for configurations where computer host names are longer than 15 symbols
  • Added “Event ID” to descriptions of all the alerts generated by the alerting rules
  • Deprecated “Run As Account does not exist on the target system, or does not have enough permissions” rule
  • Added 2 rules for alerts generating when there are problems with execution of the monitoring workflows scripts on the following agents: “MSSQL: Monitoring failed” and “MSSQL: Monitoring warning”
  • Added “MSSQL 20XX: Discovery warning” rules to generate alerts when there are non-critical problems with execution of the discovery scripts (warning events in the Operations Manager log)
  • Changed “MSSQL 20XX: Discovery failed” rules to generate alerts for only critical errors during executing discovery scripts
  • Improved error logging in the MP scripts
  • Fixed some issues in the scripts, which could lead to unstable work with WMI
  • Fixed the issue when not all available performance counters were presented at “All Performance Data” view in Memory-Optimized Data sub-folder
  • Added a new overridable parameter to monitor “Stale Checkpoint File Pairs Ratio” in order to ignore databases having the number of checkpoint file pairs less than the threshold (300 by default)
  • Made “Resources Pool Memory Consumption (rollup)” enabled by default
  • Updated the visualization library

New SQL Server Dashboards Features and Fixes

  • Improved Dashboards performance
  • Fixed issue: Regular\Virtual group tile will show 0 objects if user adds a new group before the previous one has been saved
  • Fixed issue: virtual group filtering for Generic Distributor does not work
  • Fixed issue: tooltips on some menus appear in unexpected places
  • Fixed issue: Web Console is crashing upon right-clicking the Hamburger menu
  • Fixed issue: button captions are cropped in some dashboard localization packs
  • Fixed issue: instance dashboard displays data for the item that is the first in the list if no items appear after applying a filter
  • Fixed issue: the first group object is not in focus after clearing “Filter” field if there were no search results
  • Fixed issue: Summary dashboards appear to be in a strange state if one installs only Dashboards MP without SQL MPs
  • Fixed issue: Bulk Add Tiles does not trigger the refresh action
  • Fixed issue: object and alert counters of Virtual groups containing real groups display zeros
  • Fixed issue: an error appears in Web Console when using keyboard for navigation in “Add Aggregated Monitor” dialog
  • Fixed issue: unexpected scrolling behavior in the instance view when using mouse scroll
  • Fixed issue: markup of the dialog for adding classes gets broken when the scrollbars are displayed
  • Fixed issue: wrong width value of the Edit dialog
  • Fixed issue: there is no refresh action after saving the edited Virtual Group configuration
  • Fixed issue: white-screen exception when working with a dialog in Web Console
  • Fixed issue: datacenter and instance queries fail when a special set of classes is selected

For more details, please refer to the user guides that can be downloaded along with the corresponding Management Packs.
We are looking forward to hearing your feedback at sqlmpsfeedback@microsoft.com.