Overview
Applies to the following products and features: The SentryOne Monitor product and the on-premises SQL Sentry Portal feature for SQL Sentry.
Note: Only the Log view is available for SQL Sentry Portal.
SentryOne Monitor delivers a workable set of alerts that have been carefully chosen by experienced Microsoft data platform professionals for their relevance to most database monitoring situations.
From the Alerts page, you can configure alerts to send email notifications to yourself or other members of your organization. See the Details & Emails section in this article for step-by-step instructions.
Log
Alerts view for SentryOne Monitor
Note: The on-premises SQL Sentry Portal Alerts view only displays the Log. All alert configurations are still managed through the SQL Sentry client.
Example of the Alerts view available through SQL Sentry Portal
Note: The default view on the Alerts page displays the 5 most recent alerts logged across your environment (Start Time ). You can sort the table by any of the available columns.
Note: The following columns are all read-only or hyperlinks.
Column | Description |
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Target | The covered area of the watched target that triggered the alert. Note: If the scope of the target is at the server or instance level (i.e. Q-REGRESSION and not Q-REGRESSION: SQL Server Agent Jobs), then it will be a hyperlink to display Health, Dashboards, or Top SQL for that target). |
Type | The alert type, such as SQL Server, a deadlock (Deadlocks: Deadlock), etc. |
Name | The name of the alert. |
State | The state of the alert (e.g. active or completed). An active alert has a start time, but no end time, as the situation is still meeting the conditions of the alert. |
Severity | The severity may be high, medium, or low. Note: The severity is blank unless the alert is sourced from an advisory condition alert category. |
Start Time | The time the alert started evaluating to true. |
End Time | The time the alert stopped evaluating to true. |
Duration | The amount of time that the alert was true. Note: The smallest value displayed is in seconds. If an alert was active for 500ms, it would display a duration of < 1s. |
View | Select the Details hyperlink to view a popup window containing the details logged for the alert:![]() On an alert such as High CPU, which looks for CPU greater than 90, the performance counter value collected at the time of the alert evaluation is included (e.g. Performance Counter: Processor Information: % Processor Time, Total [97.4264] > [90] *TRUE* ). |
Configuration
Applies to the following products and features: The SentryOne Monitor product.
The default view on the Configuration page displays the available alerts in SentryOne Monitor. From this tab you can select the Name to view information about the significance of the alert or configure email notifications. Select the Status to access the Evaluation Status details.
Note: The following columns are all read-only or hyperlinks.
Column | Description |
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Name | The descriptive name of the alert, such as Data File Shrink or High CPU. Select the name hyperlink to open the Alert window where you can view additional information about the meaning of the alert, as well as set up email notifications. See the Details & Emails section in this article for more information. |
Type | The coverage area (e.g. Global, Top Commands, etc.), target type (e.g. SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Windows Computer, etc.), or SentryOne Monitor component (e.g. Monitoring Service) affected by the alert. |
Tags | These are used to group the alerts by common goals (e.g. Auditing, Performance, CPU, Memory, etc.) |
Displays On if any email alerts are configured or Off if there are none. | |
Actions | Select the Status hyperlink to display the Evaluation Status table. |
Alert Details & Email Notifications
Applies to the following products and features: The SentryOne Monitor product.
Select the hyperlinked Name from the Configuration table on the Alerts page to view the Alert window:
The alert window displays a Severity at the top. Only alerts with a Category of Advisory Conditions have an associated severity level. The severity levels may be High, Medium, or Low.
About
The About section displays information about the alert's purpose or meaning, and hints or links for how to troubleshoot or investigate (where applicable).
- Show "About" by default: When this box is selected, the About section is expanded on the Alerts window, when it is not selected, the About section is collapsed by default.
Note: The Show "About" by default option is a global setting for all Alert windows.
Email Notifications
You have the option to send alert emails when an alert's condition evaluates to True.
Important: SentryOne Monitor will send a maximum of 50 alert emails per day. This maximum is for all emails, across all alerts. It is recommended that you only configure email notifications for critical alerts that require a fast response so that you keep your overall emails to a minimum, and do not miss emails for more important alerts.
Select Send alerts for [Condition Name] to me at [email@address.com] to receive email notifications for the associated alert, at the default email address for your user name. A toast notification pops up to confirm the change. Deselect this option to disable email notifications for the associated alert, for your user name.
Use the Send alerts for [Condition Name] to these email adresses: option to enter additional email addresses that should receive alert emails.
- Enter an email address, or multiple email addresses (separated by a comma).
- Select Add.
- Once you have the email addresses entered, use the Back to Conditions button to save the changes.
Select the X after an additional email address to stop it from receiving alert emails for the associated alert.
Important: Changes to email addresses (adding or deleting) are not saved until you select the Back to Alerts button.
Note: You can send alert emails to yourself, others, or a combination of these emails.
Evaluation Status
Applies to the following products and features: The SentryOne Monitor product.
The Evaluation Status table is accessed by selecting a row from the Actions column in the Configuration table.
Note: The following columns are all read-only or hyperlinks.
Column | Description |
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Object Name | The name of the target associated with the evaluation. Note: The hyperlink provides option to jump to other views for the target (e.g. health or dashboard). |
Last Result | Displays the outcome of the most recent evaluation against the alert. The result will be True or False. Example: The High CPU alert checks for sustained CPU usage over 90%.
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Duration | The amount of time it took to evaluate the result of the alert. |
Last Evaluation Time | The last time the evaluation completed. |
Last Error | If there was an error during the evaluation attempt, it displays information here. |
Evaluation Type | Displays whether the evaluation was executed as Scheduled or Manual. Each alert in SentryOne Monitor is set to evaluate at a frequency specific to the alert. Scheduled indicates that the evaluation was performed on schedule by the monitoring service. For example, the High CPU alert is scheduled to evaluate every 30 seconds, while the SQL Server Paged to Disk alert is scheduled to evaluate every 5 minutes. Manual means that a user chose to evaluate the alert ad-hoc through the configuration client. This is an infrequent Evaluation Type in SentryOne Monitor as users rarely need to access the configuration client. |
Available Alerts
Applies to the following products and features: The SentryOne Monitor product.
The following alerts are available with SentryOne Monitor.
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