You can use Status Alerts to identify issues and potential disruptions in your IDERA SQL Compliance Manager deployment. By enabling Status Alerts, you can:
- Confirm that your SQL Server instances are available to be audited.
- Ensure the SQLcompliance Agent and Collection Server are operating as expected.
- Proactively know when the event databases are growing too large so you can archive or groom your audit data before too much disk space is consumed.
Status Alerts best practices
Alert | What it means | What is the risk | What might be wrong |
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Agent cannot connect to audited instance | The SQLcompliance Agent was unable to connect to the audited SQL Server instance. This alert is sent immediately after the failed connection occurs. | You are in danger of filling the trace directory and losing important audit data. Updated audit settings are not applied to the SQL trace that is collecting events, and you will fail to collect the events you want. SQL Server continues to write trace files to the SQLcompliance Agent trace directory, but the agent cannot send these files to the Collection Server. When the trace directory is full, auditing ceases, impacting SQL Server performance. If the database id changes , the agent will not be able to detect this update, causing the SQL trace to stop. If communications between the agent and the instance are "down" for more than 7 days , the SQL trace automatically stops. |
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Agent heartbeat was not received | The Collection Server has not received a heartbeat from the SQLcompliance Agent within the specified heartbeat interval. | Auditing is not immediately affected by this issue; however, you cannot apply updated audit settings. |
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Agent trace directory reached size limit | The trace directory folder on the SQL Server computer where the SQLcompliance Agent is deployed has exceeded the disk space percentage allocated in the alert rule. | You are in danger of filling the trace directory and losing important audit data. When the trace directory reaches its specified maximum size, the SQLcompliance Agent ceases auditing the target instances. The SQL traces stop, and no subsequent events are collected. The size of the trace directory could also impact the performance of the SQL Server instances on this computer. |
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Collection Server trace directory reached size limit | The trace directory folder on the computer where the Collection Server is installed has exceeded the disk space limit specified in the alert rule. | You are in danger of filling the trace directory, which can impact the performance of the Collection Server, such as delaying alerts. In turn, a full trace directory on the Collection Server can cause the SQLcompliance Agent trace directory to fill as the trace files queue up to be sent. When the SQLcompliance Agent trace directory reaches its specified maximum size, the agent will cease auditing the target instances. The SQL traces stop, and no subsequent events are collected. |
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Event database is too large | The event database for an audited SQL Server instance is larger than the size limit specified in the alert rule. | Large event databases can significantly impact the performance of the Repository, and the SQL Server instance hosting the Repository. |