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Learn how to discover all database instances available within your enterprise network

Posted by Chad Pabalan on Jan 26, 2021 6:16:59 AM

Problem 

You are hired for a new job as a Senior DBA but the previous DBA who just left the company didn't provide the complete documentation of the existing database instances. You need to get a full overview of all instances, retrieve and document all the database instances available within the enterprise network. How could you accomplish this task? 

Have you ever found yourself in the situation where you have to take over the responsibility for a database server farmbut where documentation and overview is missing or you do not trust it to be up to date? You want to get a full overview of all instances, retrieve and document all the database instances available. How could you accomplish this task most easily? 

 

 

Solution

If you happen to run dbWatch Enterprise Manager or dbWatch Control Center, you are in luck. 

dbWatch is capable of tracking and listing all instances within a specified network range.  

dbWatch has a built-in Autodiscover feature for these situations, whether you need to create an overview from scratch, or you want to monitor your networks / subnets to see if new instances are added, then you can add all the discovered instances in your dbWatch monitor and group them accordingly. 

In this blog, you can learn how you can configure and automatically discover all instances within a custom network range which you will specify. You can also learn how to add the discovered instances in the dbWatch monitor. 

 

You will find the Autodiscover feature under the “Autodiscover” tab on the left-most side of the dbWatch Monitor. 

 

In this window, you can see that you have the register new scan box. Select the dbWatch server you want to perform the scan with. Then, specify your preferred range as this will let you specify the network range using the standard CIDR notation. Afterwards, input the network range that you would like to look for existing database instances. 

Specify the interval. Manual means you can start the scan manually whenever you want. You can also specify that the scan should be performed once a day, once a week or once a month. 

 

After specifying the details, click add to register the scan. 

 

After that, a new box will appear registering the scan. Click start to continue with the scan.

 

As you can see, the scan has started, and it discovered 90 database instances. Of combined SQLServer, Oracle, Postgresql, Mysql database instances.

Let us stop the scan for the meantime, at the left you can see the instances that are available.

Let us try adding an instance from the scan results to the dbWatch monitor. 

Right click the database icon and add instance. 

 

Another window will appear, specify the group where this instance belongs.  

Input the hostname, port number and the credentials. 

dbWatch automatically determined, that the instance belongs to an Always on Availability Group. 

Tick both cluster nodes then continue. 

 

 

Tick "install advanced monitoring" to create a dbWatch database and dbWatch login to be created by the install wizard. 

 

Choose the following tasks you wish to install on the dbWatch monitor for this SQLServer instances.

 

 

 

In the dashboard you will see that the SQLServer Always On instances (Asteroid 1 and Asteroid2) has been added to the dbWatch monitor. 

 

By following these examples, you can easily keep track of all your instances available in your network. This makes it easy for you to discover all new and existing database instances within the enterprise network and easily add them on the dbWatch monitor. 

If you have any questions or would like to know more on how dbWatch can assist you on your current enterprise database monitoring and management situation. 

 

Please contact us at: sales@dbwatch.com  

For more information visit www.dbWatch.com or wiki.dbWatch.com 

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Topics: database operations, sql server monitoring, sql monitoring tools, database monitoring, sqlmonitor, sqlperformance, sqlmanager

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