Released: System Center Management Pack for SQL Server (7.0.0.0)

We are happy to announce that updates to SQL Server Management Packs have been released!

Downloads available:

Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2016 Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server 2014 Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server (2008-2012) Microsoft System Center Management Pack for SQL Server Dashboards

Please see below for the new features and improvements. Most of them are based on your feedback. More detailed information can be found in guides that can be downloaded from the links above.

New SQL Server 2008-2012 MP Features and Fixes

  • The version of the management packs was significantly increased as the SQL Server MP product family was extended with brand new management packs for SQL Server 2017+ and SQL Server 2017+ Replication. The new management packs are designed to monitor SQL Server 2017 and the upcoming versions.
  • Reimplemented Always On workflows to enable monitoring of Availability Groups hosting over 200 databases
  • Updated alert descriptions of Availability Group monitors: added cluster name and primary replica name
  • Implemented 3 alerting rules for events #5105 (error with physical file access), #833 (IO request has taken longer than 15 seconds), and #41144 (AO availability group failed); they are disabled by default
  • Added debug information to Always On monitoring scripts
  • Disabled the alerting rule for event #18456 by default
  • Fixed issue: Invalid encoding of SQL names in Always On console tasks
  • Fixed issue: Invalid encoding of SQL instance names in Always On console tasks

 New SQL Server 2014 MP Features and Fixes

  • The version of the management packs was significantly increased as the SQL Server MP product family was extended with brand new management packs for SQL Server 2017+ and SQL Server 2017+ Replication. The new management packs are designed to monitor SQL Server 2017 and the upcoming versions.
  • Reimplemented Always On workflows to enable monitoring of Availability Groups hosting over 200 databases
  • Updated alert descriptions of Availability Group monitors: added cluster name and primary replica name
  • Implemented 3 alerting rules for events #5105 (error with physical file access), #833 (IO request has taken longer than 15 seconds), and #41144 (AO availability group failed); they are disabled by default
  • Implemented "MSSQL 2014/16: HTTP Storage: Avg. Bytes/Transfer" performance rule
  • Added debug information to Always On monitoring scripts
  • Disabled the alerting rule for event #18456 by default
  • Fixed issue: Invalid encoding of SQL names in Always On console tasks
  • Fixed issue: Invalid encoding of SQL instance names in Always On console tasks 

New SQL Server 2016 MP Features and Fixes

  • The version of the management packs was significantly increased as the SQL Server MP product family was extended with brand new management packs for SQL Server 2017+ and SQL Server 2017+ Replication. The new management packs are designed to monitor SQL Server 2017 and the upcoming versions.
  • Reimplemented Always On workflows to enable monitoring of Availability Groups hosting over 200 databases
  • Updated alert descriptions of Availability Group monitors: added cluster name and primary replica name
  • Implemented 3 alerting rules for events #5105 (error with physical file access), #833 (IO request has taken longer than 15 seconds), and #41144 (AO availability group failed); they are disabled by default
  • Added debug information to Always On monitoring scripts
  • Implemented "MSSQL 2014/16: HTTP Storage: Avg. Bytes/Transfer" performance rule
  • Enabled Memory-Optimized workflows for all editions of SQL Server 2016 by default, so far as all editions now support Memory-Optimized Data since SP1
  • Disabled the alerting rule for event #18456 by default
  • Optimized ProbeAction for User Resource Pool Memory workflows
  • Fixed issue: Invalid encoding of SQL names in Always On console tasks
  • Fixed issue: "XTP Configuration" monitor is in healthy state when XTP filegroup container and the transaction log are placed on different volumes of a physical disk
  • Fixed issue: Incorrect publishers’ names for SSIS EventCollection rules (SQL2016)
  • Fixed issue: GetSQL2016DBEngineWinServState.js crashes when getting neither "true" nor "false" as the second parameter (CheckStartupType)
  • Fixed issue: Invalid encoding of SQL instance names in Always On console tasks
  • Fixed issue: XTP Configuration monitor is always in Warning state for SQL Server 2016 Standard edition 

SQL Server Dashboards MP

  • No changes introduced; increased the version number to 7.0.0.0 to comply with the current version of SQL Server Management Packs

We are looking forward to hearing your feedback.