The user interface in Spotlight on SQL server

Hello, out there in data land. My name is Robert Pound, and I'm a product technologist for Quest. In this video, I'll show you the basics of interacting with Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise. So with the tool open, first we can talk about the navigation arrows. So these work just like they do in a web browser. So since I've been working with the tool, I have navigated through several pages so I can go forward and back, which is especially helpful if you're drilling down into things, and you want to get back one level. So before we talk about monitoring, let's go ahead and switch over to the configuration tab. You can see through tabs at the top, monitor, configure, and help. So this is probably where you're going to want to start if you're new to Spotlight. So from here you can add connections, obviously. You can also, if you so choose, modify alarms or actions, set for alarms. You can also set options for Spotlight. You can also set up diagnostic server. So you can come in here and modify the playback database, the connectivity, et cetera. And you can also create a statistics repository. This is useful for reporting. And you can also take advantage of Spotlight cloud if you choose. And you can also opt in to provide feedback, which would be excellent, but the option is yours. So moving to monitor. Here I currently have all selected, and we can go to the heat map in several ways. This is the heat map. This is a snapshot of everything that you're monitoring, and it visually shows you where the problem spots are, which systems are currently running well. So I can get to the heat map by clicking here, or this colorful icon. Spotlight today, this shows a more detailed view of what alarms are currently raised for an individual system. We can also see through time, what systems are being affected, what errors are popping up when, to give you an idea of what's happening at a specific time, whether one system is being affected or multiple systems. And then you have the alarm logs. So moving back to the heat map. I don't know why I even clicked on this icon. You'll find that many of the things in Spotlight, you can click on, you can drill down into. So for instance, if we wanted to check out why the server is having some issues, I can simply click on it, and it'll bring me to the performance page. I could have also navigated here on the side in connections. So for the connections, you have categories. So there's the all connections. You can also look at specific items. So for instance, if you wanted to only focus on SQL servers, you could. And then from these two, you can select on the individual servers themselves to get the performance page. You can also get to the reports from here. So if I click on reports then, I could click on report and that's the repository that I was talking about earlier, the statistics repository. This will allow you to get metrics in time for a given area. And if you don't want this pane here, if you want to, for instance, get all your monitored instances on the screen, you can click to hide the pane so that way only the heat map is visible for instance. And to get it back, you can simply click on it again. And you can search for individual connections. Obviously, I only have three or four connections here. But if I had 20 or 30, it might be a little harder to navigate through this list. And that's all there is to it. Hopefully this gave you an idea of how to interact with Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise. For more information you can come to the top, the very top tab. You can get documentation, links to support, et cetera. For more information on this product, go to www.Quest.com/products/Spotlight-on-SQL-Server-Enterprise. Thank you, and good luck in all future endeavors.