MS-SQL Free disk space

MS-SQL Free disk space

Purpose

SQL Server files can grow automatically from their originally specified size.
When you define a file, you can specify a specific growth increment.
Every time the file is filled, it increases its size by the growth increment.
Each file can also have a maximum size specified. If a maximum size is not specified, the file can continue to grow until it has used all available space on the disk.
It becomes then crucial to monitor free disk space on which files are stored

Monitor features include :

Monitoring free disk space on which database files are stored. It can be done on every SQL Server file type (Data - row -, Log …) or specific file name
Able to alert if free disk space has reached a given threshold expressed in MB or percentage

Configuration hints

Surveillance table:

This is a table of rules that you can use to configure and customize the configuration.
Each line of the table will define a rule of monitoring.
You can combine multiple rules to cover different cases.
Within a rule, you can configure the SQL Server file type you want to monitor, specific file name(s) using regular expressions, a free disk space threshold expressed in MB or percentage

File type
Select the specific SQL server file type you want to monitor , select “All” to monitor free disk space on which all kind of files are stored

File name:
You can set a file specific rule by setting its name in the File name filter field. Use * to match any file name, or use regular expressions.

Free disk space:
Use the multi-threshold syntax to set multiple threshold/severity associations: G2W:40 W2M:30 M2C:5 (Green To Warning, Warning To Major, etc…), expressed in MB or percentage An alarm of the corresponding severity will be sent if free disk space on wich the file is stored islower than threshold. Set 0 in the field if unused

Notice that values retrieved in MB will be rounded

Surveillance table

Parameter	Description
Active	Use this field to activate or deactivate a line of configuration.
File type	Select the specific SQL Server type file you want to monitor Select “All” so to monitor every type of file
File name	A filter to match only a specific SQL Server file name, you can use regular expression, white or black list
Free disk space	The threshold for the free disk space You can use the multi threshold syntax (i.e. : G2W:40 W2C:5) . Values can be expressed in MB or Percentage
Unit	Represents the free disk space unit of measure
Auto clear	If checked, the alarm will be cleared as soon as the alarm condition is not met anymore.
Alarm tag	This field allows to add custom text within the alarm message. %MSG% variable will contain the actual generated message and can be used such as: “my_prefix %MSG% my_suffix”. By default, tag will be used as prefix.
Alarm	If checked, this line of surveillance will be used for alarm generation.
Metric	If checked, this line of surveillance will be used for metric generation.
Report	If checked, this line of surveillance will used for showing threshold and severity in the daily report

Examples

Active	File type	File name	Free disk space	Unit	Auto clear	Alarm tag	Alarm	Metric	Report
true	Data	DBDATA	G2W:30 W2C:5	Percentage	true		true	true	true

Effect : For this rule, only Data - rows - type files will be monitored (File Type set to : “Data”).

All Data type files containing the string “DBDATA” on their file names will be taken into account.

A WARNING alarm is sent if free disk space on which each one of those files is 30% or less, a CRITICAL alarm if 5% or less.

Generated metrics

metricId	metricUnit	metricTarget	metricDescription
MSSQL_DATABASE_FREE_DISK_SPACE_MB	MB	[File type] - [File name]	Retrieved free disk space for a given database file, expressed in MB