SQL Monitor is made of two main components, a Base Monitor and a website. The Base Monitor is responsible for gathering, storing, and alerting on data. It stores and manages the data in the SQL Monitor database. The website displays all this data in a user-friendly format accessible from a web browser. Users of the website provide login details to view monitoring data, as well as to administer the monitoring service. SQL Monitor doesn't require the installation of an Agent service on each monitored server. Instead, it uses industry-standard systems for accessing remote computers, via WMI, and it communicates with the SQL Server service using T-SQL via TDS. The WMI connection can either use DCOM or WinRM for transport.

A basic SQL Monitor installation will look something like this:

Therefore, when planning to install SQL Monitor you will need to set up these three logical components of the monitoring service, as follows:

• The Base Monitor service (also called the Monitoring service) – a Windows service that continuously monitors the SQL Servers, wherever they are located, collecting, storing and transmitting the monitoring data (metrics and alerts).
• SQL Monitor database (also called the data repository) – a SQL Server database used by the Base Monitor for storing and managing the sampled metric and alert data, as well as SQL Monitor configuration settings. It is called RedGateMonitor by default.
• Web server – to run the Web server service, host the SQL Monitor web console and provide an interface with the SQL Monitor PowerShell scripting API.
  • Web UI – presents the metric and alert data to users, in the form of various graphs, projections, tables, reports and charts. Users can view monitoring data, manage monitored servers, configure SQL Monitor, and so on.
  • Web Server service – connects over secure RPC to its Base Monitor to request the monitoring data, and to authenticate users. The communication between the monitoring service and the Web Server is encrypted with a self-signed certificate. In response to these requests, the Base Monitor retrieves and interprets the stored monitoring data, and sends over the data streams required to populate and refresh the web interface.

For more detailed planning of the SQL Monitor installation, see Planning the SQL Monitor infrastructure and installation.