Within SentryOne, you can set your Default Startup Action, which will decide what screen is presented each time you open the client. By ensuring you have selected the more suitable Startup screen, you can see the data you care about most when opening the SentryOne Client.
Patrick Kelley has already covered the SentryOne Event Calendar, and the Start Page is widely used when alerting is in place, so I would like to focus this post on the SentryOne Performance Overview feature. Understanding these three features will allow you to choose the right Default Startup Action for your SentryOne installation.
Performance Overview
A feature that many SentryOne customers are not aware of is the Performance Overview. Performance Overview allows you to see high-level information for your monitored targets. Without any need for customization, this feature can provide you with valuable information as soon as you start monitoring a target.
Depending on the number of targets you are monitoring, you may want to view only business-critical instances or instances managed by a certain team. You can do so by opening the Performance Overview at either a site or group level in the Navigator Pane.
Right-clicking in the Navigator Pane or selecting the icon in the SentryOne Start Page will open the Performance Overview
In the screenshot below, you can see one of the targets is highlighted in a different colour. Based on the sample period selected, you can view the historical data for any metric over that sample period. This view will help you verify if the metric is lighting up due to a huge spike within the sample period, or if there has been consistent resource utilization.
Performance Overview feature displayed for all targets in this installation
The Performance Overview feature comes with three different thresholds. When a threshold is met, the target will change colour. If you notice a server that is highlighted, with no metric highlighted at the surface level, expand the server row to drill down to the SQL counter, where you should find the highlighted metric(s) in question.
Three different thresholds set in Performance Overview
Filtering and Toolbar Options
When you hover your mouse over any column header, a funnel icon will appear in the top right-hand corner of the column. Clicking the filter icon allows you to apply a filter to that column. The filter can be removed at any point using the filter window. I have seen this option used when filtering the view just to look at a specific issue (e.g., High CPU/High Disk Latency).
The Expand Warnings option will expand any target that has reached a certain threshold. If you have enough space on your computer monitor, I recommend enabling this option to easily view any potential issues.
Filtering by System Memory Usage
If there is a need to open the Performance Analysis Dashboard for one of our targets, double clicking on the target name will give you the View Selector option.
Conclusion
If the Performance Overview seems like a feature you could get real value from, you can set it as your Default Startup Action through User Preferences. It may also be very useful for customers who are not taking advantage of SentryOne alerting capabilities.
SentryOne User Preferences
New to SentryOne? Download a free SentryOne trial to take a closer look at the Performance Overview feature.
