First published on MSDN on Mar 20, 2013
It has been well over a year when I wrote a series of blog posts about a product called System Center Advisor. You can read these posts at this link
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/psssql/archive/tags/system+center+advisor/
When Advisor was first released, this cloud service was free for a 60 day trial period but required a Software Assurance contract to use past that.
Well we have decided that this should be free for everyone. Read more about this announcement at this link:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/momteam/archive/2013/03/06/system-center-advisor.aspx
For SQL Server, we now have over 100+ rules baked into this service representing the collective knowledge of CSS SQL Engineers worldwide on common customer issues. Have you ever wanted to know what the CSS teams knows based on common issues reported by customers? That is what SCA is all about. Providing you that knowledge in the form of a cloud-based service.
Give this a try on your SQL Server and look at the advice that is presented. We specifically baked in rules (called alerts) with the intention of helping you prevent problems before they happen.
Take a look through my previous blog posts above on this topic for some examples. What is incredibly powerful about this service is:
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Once you install, it just “runs”
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You view your alerts through a web portal so can do this anywhere
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As part of the service we capture configuration change history (i.e. a problem started but what changed?)
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We keep the rules “fresh” by updating the service each month but you don’t have to do anything. The service automatically pulls in these new rules for you.
I look forward to any comments you post to this blog regarding your experiences with it.
Bob Ward
Microsoft
