Getting Started — SQL Monitor

Portable: launch the .exe and connect. Enterprise: scroll to the Enterprise section below for architecture, install, first-run, registration, alerts, and channels.

Portable Mode

Double-click DBLenseSQLMonitor.exe — no installation required. A connection dialog appears with four authentication modes:

• Windows Authentication — Domain-joined on-premises servers
• SQL Server Authentication — SQL login/password
• Azure Entra ID — Password — Azure SQL with Entra credentials
• Azure Entra ID — MFA — Azure SQL with multi-factor auth

After connecting, DBLense automatically detects whether the server is on-premises, Azure SQL Database, or Azure SQL Managed Instance, and adjusts its queries accordingly.

Enterprise Multi-Instance Edition

The portable dashboard above monitors one server at a time. The DBLense SQL Monitor Enterprise stack adds fleet monitoring with persistent history, alerting, and notifications across many SQL Servers — competing directly with Redgate SQL Monitor, SentryOne / SQL Sentry, and Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager.

Enterprise edition is included in the same download bundle. No separate license file is required for evaluation.

Architecture

Three components plus an optional smoke-test harness:

Installation (production)

The recommended path is the unified DBLenseSQLMonitor-Setup.exe wizard. It installs and configures all three components — repository database, Collector Windows Service, and Dashboard — with options to install all together or any individual component on each host.

Recommended — Run the installer (≈ 2 minutes)

1. Download DBLenseSQLMonitor-Setup-<version>.zip from the product page, extract, then right-click DBLenseSQLMonitor-Setup.exe → Run as administrator (required for Windows Service registration).
2. Components page — tick which components to install on this host:
   • Repository Database (install once per environment).
   • Collector Windows Service (install on monitoring host(s)).
   • Dashboard UI (install on DBA workstations).
   Optionally also tick Register an initial monitored instance and Deploy baseline alert rules for a one-click first run.
3. Repository Database page — point at any SQL Server 2016+ instance, pick authentication (Windows, SQL Auth, Entra Password, Entra MFA), and click Test connection. The wizard creates DBLenseMonitor if it does not exist and deploys the mon.* schema (12 tables).
4. Collector Service page — install path, service name, poll interval (default 60 s), and whether to start immediately.
5. Dashboard page — install path, Desktop / Start Menu shortcuts, plus (if enabled) the initial monitored instance fields.
6. Install page runs everything and shows a live log. On success you can launch the dashboard immediately.

The wizard skips component-specific pages for components you did not select, so a Dashboard-only DBA workstation install takes 3 clicks.

Build the installer from source

.\scripts\Package-DBLenseSQLMonitorSetup.ps1 -Configuration Release
# Produces: DBLenseSQLMonitor.Setup\publish-output\DBLenseSQLMonitor-Setup.exe
#           artifacts\DBLenseSQLMonitor-Setup\DBLenseSQLMonitor-Setup-<date>.zip

The packager publishes the Collector + Dashboard as self-contained win-x64, stages them as a payload inside the Setup output, and zips the result for distribution.

Manual install (for locked-down / air-gapped environments)

# 1. Create the repository database
CREATE DATABASE DBLenseMonitor;
# Schema deploys on first connection — or run DBLenseSQLMonitor.Repository.RepositoryInstaller.

# 2. Publish + install the Collector service (PowerShell, elevated):
dotnet publish DBLenseSQLMonitor.Collector -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -o "C:\Program Files\DBLense\SQLMonitor.Collector"
$exe = "C:\Program Files\DBLense\SQLMonitor.Collector\DBLenseSQLMonitor.Collector.exe"
sc.exe create DBLenseMonitorCollector binPath= "`"$exe`"" start= auto DisplayName= "DBLense SQL Monitor Collector"
sc.exe description DBLenseMonitorCollector "DBLense SQL Monitor — multi-instance collector"
sc.exe start DBLenseMonitorCollector

# 3. Publish + launch the Dashboard:
dotnet publish DBLenseSQLMonitor -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -o "C:\Program Files\DBLense\SQLMonitor"
"C:\Program Files\DBLense\SQLMonitor\DBLenseSQLMonitor.exe"

Verify the install

dotnet run --project DBLenseSQLMonitor.SmokeTest

You should see SMOKE TEST PASSED ✅ with row counts > 0 across all 9 collector tables.

First-Run Walkthrough

1. Launch DBLenseSQLMonitor.exe. The header shows "Repository: connected" in green when the connection string is valid.
2. The left sidebar is empty — no instances are registered yet. Click Add Instance.
3. Fill in display name + server, choose authentication, click Test. The dialog reports edition / version / detected platform (OnPremises / AzureSqlDatabase / AzureSqlMI / AmazonRds).
4. Click Save. The Collector picks up the new instance on its next cycle (within 60 s).
5. After one cycle the KPI cards populate and tabs start showing data.
6. Open the Alert Rules tab and create your first rule (see Alert Rules).

Registering Monitored Instances

The Add / Edit Instance dialog fields:

Click Test before saving. A green checkmark means: connection succeeded, VIEW SERVER STATE works, and the platform was detected correctly.

Dashboard Tour

Header — connection status, last refresh time, Refresh button (manual refresh is rarely needed — the dashboard auto-refreshes every 15 s via a DispatcherTimer).

Sidebar (left, 260 px) — registered instances. Click an instance to scope the KPI cards and tabs to it. The buttons below the list: Add, Edit, Delete.

KPI cards (top row, 6 tiles):

Tabs (8):

Alert Rules

An alert rule combines:

• Target instance — one specific instance, or (all instances) to apply globally.
• Metric — what to evaluate (see table below).
• Comparator — >, <, >=, <=, =, !=.
• Threshold — numeric value (parsed with invariant culture, so use . not ,).
• Severity — Info, Warning, or Critical (drives event colour + notification routing).
• Suppression minutes — minimum gap between repeat alerts for the same rule + instance (default 10).
• Channels — semicolon-separated list, e.g. email;windowsEvent;webhook.

Recommended baseline rule set (paste into the Alert Rules tab):

Notification Channels

Channels are configured globally in DBLenseSQLMonitor.Collector\appsettings.json under "Notifications" and selected per-rule.

Email (SMTP)

"Notifications": {
  "Email": {
    "Enabled": true,
    "SmtpHost": "smtp.office365.com",
    "SmtpPort": 587,
    "UseSsl": true,
    "Username": "alerts@yourdomain.com",
    "Password": "***",
    "From": "alerts@yourdomain.com",
    "To": [ "dba-oncall@yourdomain.com" ]
  }
}

Windows Event Log

No config required — writes to the Application log with source DBLenseSQLMonitor. Useful for SCOM, Datadog, Splunk universal forwarder and any agent that tails the Event Log.

Webhook (Teams / Slack / PagerDuty)

"Notifications": {
  "Webhook": {
    "Enabled": true,
    "Url": "https://hooks.slack.com/services/T000/B000/XXX",
    "Format": "slack"   // or "teams" | "pagerduty" | "generic"
  }
}

Payload includes: rule name, instance display name, metric, observed value, threshold, severity, captured-UTC, and a link back to the dashboard if "DashboardUrl" is set.

Azure SQL & Amazon RDS Notes

Required Permissions

The Collector login on each monitored instance needs:

USE master;
CREATE LOGIN dblense_monitor WITH PASSWORD = 'StrongPwd!';
GRANT VIEW SERVER STATE TO dblense_monitor;
GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO dblense_monitor;
GRANT VIEW ANY DATABASE TO dblense_monitor;

-- For Agent Job monitoring:
USE msdb;
CREATE USER dblense_monitor FOR LOGIN dblense_monitor;
EXEC sp_addrolemember 'SQLAgentReaderRole', 'dblense_monitor';

On Azure SQL DB use VIEW DATABASE STATE on each monitored database instead of VIEW SERVER STATE. On RDS use the RDS master user (sysadmin permissions inside the RDS-allowed scope).

The Collector login on the repository database needs db_owner on first deploy (to create the mon schema + tables) and can be downgraded to db_datareader + db_datawriter + EXECUTE on mon afterwards.

Tuning & Retention

Troubleshooting

Production readiness caveat: the build is MVP-grade. The wire protocol, schema, and alert engine work end-to-end and pass smoke tests, but DBLense SQL Monitor Enterprise has not yet undergone the multi-month soak testing that competing products carry. Pilot it in a non-critical environment first.