Most of us have encountered a situation like the following at some point in our careers: something either isn’t working right or could be working better. You’ve been through the process to understand the problem and identify solutions. (Check out my blog post “4 Steps to Efficiently Solve Problems” if you’re still working on understanding the problem.) Now it’s time to pick a solution—and you can’t get stakeholders to agree on one.

In this article, you will learn how to monitor SQL Server with Prometheus. SQL Server is a popular database, which is very straightforward to monitor with a simple Prometheus exporter. Like all databases, SQL Server has many points of failure, such as delays in transactions or too many connections in the database. We are basing this guide on Golden Signals, a reduced set of metrics that offer a wide view of a service from a user or consumer perspective.

In my previous blogs in the Dashboard Server Learning Path, we looked at working with the Web API tile and the PowerShell tile. In this instalment, let’s try the SQL tile. This tile will let you connect to any SQL database and run a SQL query straight from SquaredUp. This tile is also available in both the SquaredUp for SCOM and Azure products, so I have some familiarity with it already.

Innovation is widely accepted to be a great thing—think of all the new products, technologies, methodologies, services, etc. unveiled at any given time. At this point, you’re probably thinking, "This all sounds great! Why would someone be writing about a downside of innovation?" Innovation is great when it pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved and inspires people to build upon things others have built or dreamed of. But innovation is useless without adoption.

In 2020, Deloitte reported on The four trends that define insurance and showed that the future of the insurance marketplace is going to be significantly different. Life and Property and Casualty insurers, for example, estimated that 93% of their volume already came from propositions that were not offered five years ago. New propositions were expected to keep on rising, with nearly a quarter of investment spend in insurance allocated to new product development.