No matter where we choose to travel, there is one critical component that will help you reach your destination most efficiently: a map. It is something we all carry with us when travelling, whether it’s mentally, physically, electronically, or otherwise.
I am sure we can all recall a time in which we felt lost or didn’t have a map that pointed us to our destination, and we ended up stranded, scared, or confused until we were able to figure out how to get to where we were going. All it takes is one of these experiences to make you never want to leave the house without a GPS-enabled device (or road atlas if that’s more your style) again. So, if you wouldn’t risk driving to your vacation destination without a map, why would you migrate your workloads to the cloud without one?
Taking inventory of the database dependencies that exist in your organization is a critical first step in a cloud migration. The Environment Map in SentryOne Document, our database documentation and data lineage analysis solution, leverages SentryOne SQL Sentry, our database performance monitoring software, to provide a map of your data estate.
With Environment Map, you can delve deep into the dependencies within your connected environment at the application, user, target, and client level. This dependency mapping, paired with the database performance optimization offered by SQL Sentry, will help you confidently and intelligently make database changes, shift workloads to the cloud, and identify dependencies much more efficiently.
SentryOne Document Environment Map
Extending the Power of SQL Sentry
The SentryOne Top SQL view displays long-running and high-impact queries so that you can easily troubleshoot SQL Server performance problems. Correlating and aggregating data from Top SQL (stored in the SentryOne database) with Windows performance information allows us to build a complete picture of all applications making use of a SQL Server instance or specific database. If the data source is monitored by SQL Sentry, you also gain visibility down to the individual service and executable level.
SQL Sentry Performance Analysis Dashboard
The dependency information is surfaced in an easy-to-understand graphical representation in SentryOne Document that shows you the clients, applications, and users that connect to the servers you’re monitoring, as well as their relative activity levels. As organizations begin to invest in distributing their workloads between the public cloud and private internal networks, understanding the dependent connections on your data sources is critical to planning your cloud migration and ensuring things go smoothly post-migration.
A Clear View of Data Dependencies and Connections
The Environment Map builds on SentryOne Document’s lineage engine. Not only can you dive deep into your SQL Server environment with the Environment Map, but you can also see the data dependencies and connections between the other data sources in your environment. These data sources include:
- SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
- SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)
- SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)
- Azure Data Factory
- Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly Azure SQL Data Warehouse)
- Salesforce
- Excel
- Tableau
- And more!
SentryOne Document captures metadata from your data sources. The documentation and lineage are based on the schemas and solutions that exist at design time. With Environment Map, however, run-time information becomes part of SentryOne Document, allowing the documentation and lineage to show dynamic data, which adds an extra dimension to the information provided. All the queries that are captured by Top SQL in SQL Sentry will also be included in the Environment Map, which you’ll see in both the documentation and lineage views in SentryOne Document.
Preparing for Your Cloud Database Migration
We know how important it is to be well prepared for a cloud migration, and we’re committed to helping you lift and shift with confidence. SentryOne Document’s Environment Map is an important addition to our CloudLifter initiative and will allow you to reduce the time and resources required to analyze the potential impact of database changes, as well as ensure data integrity throughout the entire migration process. CloudLifter can help you achieve fast performance before and after your transition to the cloud.
From data testing and validation through monitoring and optimizing the performance of Azure databases, SentryOne offers a full suite of capabilities that can simplify your journey to the cloud. Read more about how SentryOne can help simplify your journey to the cloud here.
Filter the Objects You Want to See in Your Environment Map
A Map to Help You on Your Journey to the Cloud
Painting a clear picture of your data estate with the Environment Map is easy, and the benefits offered in both SentryOne Document and SQL Sentry will save you hours by empowering you to optimize delivery of business-critical data and simplify the management of complex data environments. Don’t forget your map on your journey to the cloud!
To learn how to create an Environment Map of the data in your data estate, check out our Environment Map guide. And, you can give the capabilities discussed here a try with a free trial of SentryOne Document and SQL Sentry.
