1. Good Morning,
My name is Mike Duke and I represent for SQL Services.
SQL Services is a joint venture between SecureData of Australia and Computerland New Zealand that specialises in consulting and managing Microsoft SQL Server environments.
Securedata is a leading Managed Services provider in Australia and recently took a controlling interest in SQL Services, firstly to drive the SQL Services offerings into Australia and secondly to expand the Managed Service offerings in New Zealand.
SQL Services offers Assessment, Improvement and Management services for Microsoft SQL Server environments.
Today we are announcing the release of the SQL Services Portal.
This portal is a development of the tool set that SQL Services uses internally. Over the last 5 years SQL Services has developed its tool set such that today our DBA’s look after over 20 servers each, at a level well beyond that of a normal DBA. This compares to less than 5 servers when we first started. On top of that our service operates 24*7, 365.
By making this available to our customers we believe that our customer will be able to better monitor and manage their SQL Server environments. This enhance their business applications performance and reliability and give them an assurance that their SQL Server environments are secure, recoverable and reliable, 24*7, 365 days a year.
Our customer have previously had written monthly reporting of the status of their Microsoft SQL Servers under our Service Level Contract, from today on all customers with an SLA contract will have web access to the current, near real time, status of their SQL Servers. There is also in-depth historical reporting for security and diagnostic purposes.
Let see what you get!
By going to the SQL Services Home page, and selecting the Client tab, the Dashboard offering is available to all customers whose servers are covered by a Service Level Agreement.

2. Security is always important, especially when names of servers and there associated details are available.
SQL Services uses SSL to insure secure access.
You will be required to request a log on using a valid, authorised address and SQL verified password.
These will be validated against your database of customers and valid users.
Primary Screen

3. What you see here is the primary screen for a customer
What you see here is the primary screen for a customer. On the left is an Explorer like view on the left of all the servers and then the that are available.
The Current Server Status on the right shows the status of the selected server.
This is a snapshot for the timeframe, 5pm yesterday until the current time.
The top part of the report shows the Server Uptime.
We manage Server Availability by having our tool set send regular messages to our Operations Centre in Nelson. If a message is not received from a server, the automated processes in Nelson checks if there is other servers at your site and if they are still responding.
If they are we record the individual server in a failed state, and create the required alerts.
If the other servers are also not responding then the system checks to see if we are receiving messages from other sites.
If we are then we record the site as down and again create the required alerts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
If we are not receiving from any site then there is a slight panic in our place!
Our response to the Alerts depends on the level of SLA that a customer has with us. A Fully Managed Server with 24*7 coverage will have us respond within an hour, 24*7.
Contact times is recorded in the 2nd block. Its interesting to note in here that we record both the servers local time and the NZ time. You maybe aware that we monitor servers internationally, especially in Australia.
Through our relationship with Securedata Group this is a growing part of our business.
Below that are 11 boxes, using the standard SQL Services flags, of Green Ticks, Orange I’s and Red Crosses, to show the status of each areas of the server that SQL Server monitors under your SLA Agreement. This page is our confidence page, All Green we are happy, orange then someone should have a look, RED needs something!!
You can access the reports in 2 ways. Firstly clicking on the Tick, Cross or Info flag. This takes you directly to the report, with the time range set at “since 5pm Last Workday” (Last Workday is last business day, i.e. Monday morning you see back to Friday)
The second way is to use the Explorer like functionality on the left and to enter the time range and parameters as desired.
Lets have a look quickly at each of the reports.
System Information

4. For each server we log details of the equipment, network, Microsoft SQL Server (excluding licensing details), the file locations and details of the setup of the SQL Services jobs.
These are important to us to ensure that SQL Server is correctly configured.
For example the number of processors effects the Parallisation setting with SQL Server.
In addition this shows the time of scheduled jobs, such as the scheduled Backup.
Information provided here is not modifiable.
The Management Section

5. This section covers:
Server Uptime
Backups
Successful and Failed Jobs
For each report you can enter differing parameters, for example selecting the Time Periods from the drop down or by entering a start and end dates for the report. Each report has this as standard along other parameters and also graphs where appropriate.
In the Uptime Report itself you can see the Restart Dates and Times on the left and on the right the uptime periods.
Lets move on to the Successful Backups Report

6. The Successful Backups Report show the backup that have completed
The Successful Backups Report show the backup that have completed. Parameters allow selection of either all backups or just the Log, Data, Incremental or Filegroup Backups
In this case I have selected the last 48 hours for all database, however as you can see you do have the option of only selecting for a specific database and Backup types.
This should really help you when you have to restore a database to a specific point in time for example.
Successful Jobs Report

7. This report shows Successful Jobs on the server.
“Successful Jobs” are server side jobs, such as agent jobs and server side initiated jobs. These are not generally application initiated. Commonly these are regular scheduled jobs.
In this case I have Excluded the SQL services jobs and on this particular server there been only some “Delete Invalid LDAP Entry” jobs.
Details of the job, its start time and duration are available.
Failed Jobs

8. The Failed Jobs reports show server side jobs and details of the reasons, error codes etc.
Again selectable with time ranges and for various jobs.
For customers this will assist in the process of identifying why jobs are failing, for SQL Services these create Alerts that we would investigate and resolve.
Security Section

9. The Security Section consists of 2 reports, the first above covers Failed Logins.
Customer should be monitoring this, its common for us in Health Checks to find these are not monitored and the reason we track them is to identify attacks on the database.
The next Security report is the Sys Admin Report

10. This report shows the Current SysAdmin Members and changes made during the selected period.
This manages the security by monitoring the adding and deleting of Sys Admin users.
Lets move on
The Server Information Section covers:
The SQL Server configuration details
Disk Space
Disk Space Alerts
Error Logs

11. Config Settings The Server Configuration Report shows:
Shows SQL Server Configure settings, both existing and any changes as to what is running as compared to what will happen if you reboot.
Some changes happen straight away, some need a reboot.
This is good for managing changes as they happen and as a diagnostic tool if there are issue that could have been created by configuration service.

12. The Current Disk Space Report shows at the top the configured disk sets along with the current free space at the top of the report along with an estimation of if and when there could be space issues.
The Free Disk space is calculated on a daily basis.
The bottom part of the report shows the specific details for a particular disk set for a given period. Any disk set can be selected along with the period that is of interest.

13. This report shows the disk space Alerts that have been generated along with change in Free space over a month long period.
These Alerts are generated by the SQL Services jobs and under our SLA services we manage these to ensure that space is always available.
There are disk space thresholds in our system to help manage the available space.
Error Log Report

14. The Error Log Report shows all SQL Server errors, the source and the message.
Used mainly for diagnose
The Database Section covers the existing databases and their configuration options, New Databases and deleted databases
Database Options Report

15. This report looks at the existing databases and their settings along with changes that have been made during the period specified.
All databases can be selected or a specific one as required.
SQL Services monitors the database setting to ensure that these conform to best practice and site rules
New databases report

16. This report show the New databases created in a selected time period on the server, along with the database owner, the data and log size plus the Filename and Options.
This report is primarily used monitor the creation of new databases and to ensure that they get included in backups and site documentation.
Delete Databases Report

17. The Deleted Database shows databases that have been deleted from the server along with the date.
Returning to the primary screen

18. There are a couple of other things that you should note on all screens.
At the top there are “Contact Us”, “My Account” and “Logout” tabs
The Contact Us tab