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Announcing ExtendedTSQLCollector
I haven’t been blogging much lately, actually I haven’t been blogging at all in the last 4 months. The reason behind is I have been putting all my efforts in a new project I started recently, which absorbed all my attention and spare time.
I am proud to announce that my project is now live and available to everyone for download.
The project name is ExtendedTSQLCollector and you can find it at http://extendedtsqlcollector.codeplex.com. As you may have already guessed, it’s a bridge between two technologies that were not meant to work together, that could instead bring great advantages when combined: Extended Events and Data Collector.
ExtendedTSQLCollector is a set of two Collector Types built to overcome some of the limitations found in the built-in collector types and extend their functionality to include the ability to collect data from XE sessions.
The first Collector Type is the “Extended T-SQL Query” collector type, which was my initial goal when I started the project. If you have had the chance to play with the built-in “Generic T-SQL Query” collector type, you may have noticed that not all datatypes are supported. For instance, it’s impossible to collect data from XML or varchar(max) columns. This is due to the intermediate format used by this collector type: the SSIS raw files.
The “Extended T-SQL Query” collector type uses a different intermediate format, which allows collecting data of any data type. This is particularly useful, because SQL Server exposes lots of information in XML format (just think of the execution plans!) and you no longer need to code custom SSIS packages to collect that data.
The second Collector Type is the “Extended XE Reader” collector type, which takes advantage of the Extended Events streaming APIs to collect data from an Extended Events session, without the need to specify additional targets such as .xel files or ring buffers. This means no file system bloat due to .xel rollover files and no memory consumption for additional ring buffers: all the events are read directly from the session and processed in near real-time.
In addition to the filter predicates defined in the XE session, you can add more filter predicates on the data to collect and upload to the MDW and decide which columns (fields and actions) to collect. The collector will take care of creating the target table in your MDW database and upload all the data that satisfies the filter predicates.
The near real-time behavior of this collector type allowed me to include an additional feature to the mix: the ability to fire alerts in response to Extended Events. The current release (1.5) allows firing email alerts when the events are captured, with additional filter predicates and the ability to include event fields and actions in the email body. You can find more information on XE alerts in the documentation.
Here is an example of the email alerts generated by the XEReader collector type for the blocked_process event:
Another part of the project is the CollectionSet Manager, a GUI to install the collector types to the target servers and configure collection sets and collection items. I think that one of the reasons why the Data Collector is very underutilized by DBAs is the lack of a Graphical UI. Besides the features specific to the ExtendedTSQLCollector, such as installing the collector type, this small utility aims at providing the features missing in the SSMS Data Collector UI. This part of the project is still at an early stage, but I am planning to release it in the next few months.
My journey through the ins and outs of the Data Collector allowed me to understand deeply how it works and how to set it up and troubleshoot it. Now I am planning to start a blog series on this topic, from the basics to the advanced features. Stay tuned 🙂
I don’t want to go into deep details on the setup and configuration of this small project: I just wanted to ignite your curiosity and make you rush to codeplex to download your copy of ExtendedTSQLCollector.
What are you waiting for?
Data Collector Clustering Woes
During the last few days I’ve been struggling to work around something that seems to be a bug in SQL Server 2008 R2 Data Collector in a clustered environment. It’s been quite a struggle, so I decided to post my findings and my resolution, hoping I didn’t contend in vain.
SYMPTOMS:
After setting up a Utility Control Point, I started to enroll my instances to the UCP and everything was looking fine.
When an instance is enrolled to a UCP, the sysutility_mdw database can be used as a target Management Datawarehouse for non-utility collection sets, such as the built-in system collection sets. Actually, the utility database is the only possible target for any collection set, since the data collection configuration is shared between utility and non-utility collection sets.
That said, I enabled and started the system collection sets and eagerly waited for some data to show up on the built-in reports. As nothing turned up, I checked the data collector jobs and they were executing successfully, so the data had to be there, hidden somewhere.
In fact, the data had been collected and uploaded successfully, but it didn’t show up in the reports because of the way the data source had been registered in the Management Datawarehouse internal tables.
A quick look at [core].[source_info_internal] unveiled the root cause of the issue: the clustered instances had been registered with the physical name of the cluster node and not with the virtual server name of the instance.
The built-in Data Collector reports filter data in this table using the server name connected in SSMS, which is obviously very different from what found in the data sources table. For instance, when connected to the clustered instance VIRTUAL1\INST01, I didn’t see any performance data showing in the report because the data had been collected using the physical network name of the owner node (eg. PHYSICAL1\INST01).
I know it may sound confusing at this point, so keep the following picture in mind while looking at servers and instances in the example.
So, what was wrong with my setup? How could it be fixed?
I tried everything that came to my mind to no avail. In order, I tried:
- Wiping out the datawarehouse database (sysutility_mdw)
- Reinstalling the instance hosting the datawarehouse
- Changing the upload jobs (this one looked promising, because some job steps contained the $(MACH)\$(INST) tokens instead of the $(SRVR) token I would have expected, but it didn’t work either)
- Updating data in the tables directly
Nothing I tried solved the issue: every time the upload jobs ran at the enrolled instances, the wrong instance names turned up in the data sources table.
I suspect something was wrong in the Management Datawarehouse instance, since the same issue affected all the enrolled instances, no matter where they were installed. Question is I was unable to find a way to make it work.
The only thing that worked for me was forcing SQL Server to understand what my cluster setup looks like and preventing it from using cluster node names instead of virtual instance names.
As ugly as it can be, the only fix that worked was a view + INSTEAD OF TRIGGER combination.
First of all we need some tables to store the cluster layout, with nodes and instances.
-- Create a couple of tables in msdb to -- describe the cluster topology USE msdb; GO CREATE TABLE sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes ( cluster_id int NOT NULL, node_name sysname NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ) GO CREATE TABLE sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers ( cluster_id int NOT NULL, virtual_server_name sysname NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, instance_name sysname NULL, server_name AS virtual_server_name + ISNULL('\' + NULLIF(instance_name,'MSSQLSERVER'),'') ) GO INSERT INTO sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes (cluster_id, node_name) VALUES (1,'PHYSICAL1'), (1,'PHYSICAL2'), (2,'PHYSICAL3'), (2,'PHYSICAL4') GO INSERT INTO sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers (cluster_id, virtual_server_name, instance_name) VALUES (1,'VIRTUAL1','INST01'), (1,'VIRTUAL2','INST02'), (2,'VIRTUAL3','INST03') GO GRANT SELECT ON object::sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes TO [dc_proxy]; GRANT SELECT ON object::sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers TO [dc_proxy];
Then we need to update the data sources collected using the cluster node name instead of the virtual name:
USE [sysutility_mdw] GO UPDATE trg SET trg.instance_name = REPLACE(trg.instance_name COLLATE database_default, nodes.node_name + '\', srv.virtual_server_name + '\') FROM [core].[source_info_internal] AS trg INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes AS nodes ON nodes.node_name = SUBSTRING(trg.instance_name, 1, LEN(nodes.node_name)) COLLATE database_default INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers AS srv ON nodes.cluster_id = srv.cluster_id -- Now server names should be ok SELECT * FROM sysutility_mdw.[core].[source_info_internal] GO
Now we will replace the data sources table with a view that multiplies virtual server names for each possible owner node. This is required because the collection sets keep trying to upload data using the cluster node name and they fail miserably when the data source is not found in the table (“the specified collection set is not valid in this data warehouse”)
USE [sysutility_mdw] GO -- Rename the data sources table EXEC sp_rename 'core.source_info_internal', 'source_info_internal_ms' USE [sysutility_mdw] GO SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO CREATE VIEW [core].[source_info_internal] AS SELECT sii.source_id ,sii.collection_set_uid ,instance_name = (nds.node_name + ISNULL('\' + NULLIF(srv.instance_name,'MSSQLSERVER'),'')) COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AI ,sii.days_until_expiration ,sii.operator FROM core.source_info_internal_ms AS sii INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers AS srv ON sii.instance_name COLLATE database_default = srv.server_name INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes AS nds ON nds.cluster_id = srv.cluster_id UNION ALL SELECT * FROM core.source_info_internal_ms GO
And now the last thing we need to create is a trigger on the view, in order to control what gets written to the original table.
With this in place, we should have only “good” server names showing up in the instance_name column.
CREATE TRIGGER [core].[TR_source_info_internal_IU] ON [core].[source_info_internal] INSTEAD OF INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE AS BEGIN SET NOCOUNT ON; -- Update rows using the source_id UPDATE trg SET days_until_expiration = i.days_until_expiration FROM core.source_info_internal_ms AS trg INNER JOIN inserted AS i ON trg.source_id = i.source_id WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM deleted WHERE source_id = i.source_id ) -- Turn INSERTs into UPDATEs using the -- cluster physical / virtual conversion UPDATE trg SET days_until_expiration = i.days_until_expiration FROM core.source_info_internal_ms AS trg INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers AS srv ON srv.server_name = trg.instance_name COLLATE database_default INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes AS nodes ON nodes.cluster_id = srv.cluster_id INNER JOIN inserted AS i ON trg.collection_set_uid = i.collection_set_uid AND trg.operator = i.operator AND nodes.node_name + ISNULL('\' + NULLIF(srv.instance_name,'MSSQLSERVER'),'') = i.instance_name COLLATE database_default WHERE NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM deleted WHERE source_id = i.source_id ) -- Handle proper INSERTs ;WITH newrows AS ( SELECT collection_set_uid, v_server.instance_name, days_until_expiration, operator FROM inserted AS i CROSS APPLY ( SELECT instance_name = COALESCE(( SELECT srv.server_name FROM msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers AS srv INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes AS nodes ON nodes.cluster_id = srv.cluster_id WHERE srv.server_name = i.instance_name COLLATE database_default ),( SELECT srv.server_name FROM msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_servers AS srv INNER JOIN msdb.dbo.sysutility_ucp_managed_cluster_nodes AS nodes ON nodes.cluster_id = srv.cluster_id WHERE nodes.node_name + ISNULL('\' + NULLIF(srv.instance_name,'MSSQLSERVER'),'') = i.instance_name COLLATE database_default ), ( SELECT i.instance_name COLLATE database_default ) ) -- end coalesce ) AS v_server WHERE NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM deleted WHERE source_id = i.source_id ) ) INSERT INTO core.source_info_internal_ms (collection_set_uid, instance_name, days_until_expiration, operator) SELECT collection_set_uid, instance_name, days_until_expiration, operator FROM newrows WHERE NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM core.source_info_internal_ms WHERE collection_set_uid = newrows.collection_set_uid AND instance_name = newrows.instance_name AND operator = newrows.operator ) DELETE trg FROM core.source_info_internal_ms AS trg WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM deleted WHERE source_id = trg.source_id ) AND NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM inserted WHERE source_id = trg.source_id ) END
Obviously I don’t have access to the source code of the Data Collector, but I suspect it uses a component which is not cluster-aware (dcexec.exe) and for some reason it ends up using the wrong IP address to communicate with the management datawarehouse. I have nothing to support my supposition: it only seems reasonable to me and it resembles something I experienced in the past with non-cluster-aware services, such as the SQL Browser.
Is this a bug? Definitely!
Should I report it on Connect? Maybe: the results with past items are so discouraging that I don’t think I’ll bother taking the time to file it. It must be said that reproducing this error is not easy: any other failover cluster instance I have laying around was not affected by this issue, so I guess it’s an edge case. Nevertheless, worth fixing.
UPDATE 15 sept 2016:
Turns out that the whole problem arises ONLY when a proxy account runs the data collection job steps. If the job steps are run impersonating the SQL Server Agent account, the error doesn’t turn up. I suggest this solution rather than the complicated view/trigger solution proposed here.