SQL Sentry Portal Alerts

How are Alerts displayed in SQL Sentry Portal?

SQL Sentry Portal 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. The Alerts tab displays a list of all of the conditions in your SQL Sentry environment that have evaluated to True.

View the Alerts tab at the Global Inventory level, or from an individual target level. From the Alerts tab, you can sort and filter current and active alerts across your environment monitored by SQL Sentry. View the most recent 15 alerts by default or dig deeper into previously recorded alerts. You can assign a user to an active alert directly from the Alerts tab, acknowledge alerts, and add notes.

The following Alerting information is displayed on the Alerts grid.

Column	Description
Ack (Acknowledged)	Select the checkbox to acknowledge the selected alert. Select the filter button to filter by the alert resolution status.
Notes	Add, edit, or delete notes for a selected alert. See the Notes section below for more information.
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, Performance, Top SQL, Blocking, Deadlocks, or TempDB for that target).
Type	The alert type, such as SQL Server, a deadlock (Deadlocks: Deadlock), etc.
Name	The name of the alert.
Condition Type	Conditions can fall into the General, Audit, Failsafe, and Advisory categories. For more information about the types of conditions categorized by SQL Sentry, see the General Conditions, Audit Conditions, Failsafe Conditions, and Advisory Conditions articles. Select the filter button to filter by specific condition types.
Action Type	The action that is set to occur once the monitored condition has been met. Actions are configured in the SQL Sentry client in the Conditions pane. For more information about configuring actions, and the available actions in SQL Sentry, see the Actions article. Select the filter button to filter by specific action types.
Assigned User	The user or group assigned to the alert. If a user or group has not been assigned, select the drop-down menu and select the user or group you want to assign. You can also search for a user or group with the drop-down search bar.
Severity	The severity may be high, medium, or low. Select the filter button to filter by specific severity levels.
Tags	Any tags associated with the event.
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 logged details for any alert

Click any alert to display the Alert Details screen.

Alert Details 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.The available details vary depending on the condition, and may contain information such as the step of a failed SQL Server Agent job and the error behind the failure.

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* ).

Click the link under See Also: for more information about your selected alert.

Filter alerts

You can filter alerts by the Ack (Acknowledge), Target, Condtion Type, Action Type, Severity, or Tags columns. Filter Alerts by completing the following steps:

Select the filter button for the desired category to open the filter drop-down menu.
Select the Column, Operator, and value you'd like to filter by, and then click + Add Filter.
Repeat the steps above for any additional categories.

Note: Select the Clear button at the top of the Alerts Log to clear any filter.

Filter with the Search bar

Use the search bar to further filter your Alerts. Type your search parameters into the search bar and select enter to filter the Alerts Log.

Add, edit, or delete alert notes

Add, edit, and delete notes for any given alert through the Alerts grid.

Click the Notes button to open the Alert Notes pane. The following options are available.

Buttons

Button	Description
+	Click the + to add a new note. Enter the text for your note in the textbox and assign a user from the drop-down menu. Click Saveto save your note. Note: Select Include in Notifications to include your note in the alert notification.
Refresh	Click the refresh button to refresh the alert note pane.
X	Click the X button to close the alert note pane.
Include In Notifications	Indicates whether this note is included in alert notifications. A checkmark means the note is included.
	Select the pencil button to edit an existing note. Enter the text for your note in the textbox and assign a user from the drop-down menu. Click Saveto save your note.
	Select the Trash button to delete a note.

Note: A prompt displays when you have successfully added, edited, or deleted a note.