Question

Is anyone using Cacti to monitor SQL server counters (disk queue length, i/o requests etc).
If you are, how did you go about accomplishing this? Basically I gather a number of performance counters on my SQL Servers. I need a way to create graphs and slice and dice the data that I have gathered? If you know of any other graphing solutions let me know?

Answer 1

Yes, done this a few times:

http://docs.cacti.net/usertemplate:host:microsoft:sqlserver

It works really well. You need access to create a login. This is the script you run which is not invasive:

/*  SQL 2005/2008 */
USE [master]
GO
CREATE LOGIN [cactistats] WITH PASSWORD=SomePassword, DEFAULT_DATABASE=[master], DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=[us_english], CHECK_EXPIRATION=OFF, CHECK_POLICY=OFF
GO
EXEC sys.sp_addsrvrolemember @loginame = N'cactistats', @rolename = N'processadmin'
GO
CREATE USER [cactistats] FOR LOGIN [cactistats] WITH DEFAULT_SCHEMA=[dbo]
GO
GRANT SELECT ON [sys].[dm_os_performance_counters] TO [cactistats]
GO
/* END */

Once it’s run and you’ve added the scripts as per the installation documentation, you will be able to graph SQL metrics.

Mike