Released: System Center Management Pack for SQL Server and Dashboards (6.7.20.0)

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

A Note About Dashboard Performance

Sometimes, you may run into a situation when dashboards open rather unwillingly—it may take quite a lot of time to get them ready. The core of the issue lays in large amounts of data written into Data Warehouse throughout the day. Every bit of this data is to be processed when you open any dashboard, which may lead to dashboards freezing. The issue is rather frequent if you open the dashboards after a certain period of inactivity. To neutralize this issue, it is recommended to enable the special “DW data early aggregation” rule. The rule will distribute the Data Warehouse processing load during the day, which will result in a quicker start of the dashboards.

By default, the rule has a 4-hour launch interval which works for most environments. In case the dashboards have not reached the desired performance level in your environment, decrease the interval. The more frequently the rule launches, the quicker the dashboards behave. However, do not decrease the interval below 15 minutes and do not forget to override the rule timeout value to keep it always lower than the interval value.

SP Compliance Monitor Known Issue

“SP Compliance” monitor of SQL 2016 MP throws an alert and switches to "Warning" state even if the monitored instance of SQL Server 2016 has SP1 already installed. The cause of the issue is that SP1 does not update the corresponding parameter in WMI. Therefore, the management pack considers that no SP is installed. Override the monitor to either disable it or set 0 as the minimal required SP level.  This issue will be fixed in SQL Server SP2.

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

  • Implemented some enhancements to data source scripts
  • Fixed issue: The SQL Server 2012 Database Files and Filegroups get undiscovered upon Database discovery script failure
  • Fixed issue: DatabaseReplicaAlwaysOnDiscovery.ps1 connects to a cluster instance using node name instead of client access name and crashes
  • Fixed issue: CPUUsagePercentDataSource.ps1 crashes with “Cannot process argument because the value of argument "obj" is null” error
  • Fixed issue: Description field of custom user policy cannot be discovered
  • Fixed issue: SPN Status monitor throws errors for servers not joined to the domain
  • Fixed issue: SQL Server policy discovery does not ignore policies targeted to system databases in some cases
  • Fixed issue: GetSQL20XXSPNState.vbs fails when domain controller is Read-Only
  • Fixed issue: SQL ADODB "IsServiceRunning" function always uses localhost instead of server name
  • Increased the length restriction for some policy properties in order to make them match the policy fields
  • Actualized Service Pack Compliance monitor according to the latest published Service Packs for SQL Server

New SQL Server 2014 and 2016 MP Features and Fixes

  • Implemented some enhancements to data source scripts
  • Fixed issue: DatabaseReplicaAlwaysOnDiscovery.ps1 connects to a cluster instance using node name instead of client access name and crashes
  • Fixed issue: CPUUsagePercentDataSource.ps1 crashes with “Cannot process argument because the value of argument "obj" is null” error
  • Fixed issue: Description field of custom user policy cannot be discovered
  • Fixed issue: SPN Status monitor throws errors for servers not joined to the domain
  • Fixed issue: SQL Server policy discovery does not ignore policies targeted to system databases in some cases
  • Fixed issue: Garbage Collection monitor gets generic PropertyBag instead of performance PropertyBag
  • Fixed issue: GetSQL20XXSPNState.vbs fails when domain controller is Read-Only
  • Fixed issue: SQL ADODB "IsServiceRunning" function always uses localhost instead of server name
  • Increased the length restriction for some policy properties in order to make them match the policy fields
  • Actualized Service Pack Compliance monitor according to the latest published Service Packs for SQL Server

SQL Server Dashboards MP

  • No changes since 6.7.15.0. The version number has been bumped to 6.7.20.0 to match the current version of SQL Server MPs.

We are looking forward to hearing your feedback.