About SQL Monitor's support for extended events

To provide richer and more accurate information, SQL Monitor uses extended events by default.

Extended events are only supported on monitored instances with the following versions of SQL Server:

• SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2 CU12 and greater,
• SQL Server 2012 SP1 CU6 and greater.
• SQL Server 2014 and greater.

This is due to a known issue when using extended events on SQL Server 2008 and 2012. Please see the KB2878139 article for further information.

Requirements for Extended Events

Please ensure that the credentials used to monitor each instance have sufficient permissions to create extended events:

• For SQL Server 2012 and greater, the user must be granted ALTER ANY EVENT SESSION permissions.
• For SQL Server 2008R2, the user must be granted CONTROL SERVER permissions.

Configuring Extended Events 

Go to the Configuration tab under Monitoring, select Extended Events:

Enabling extended event sessions on all monitored SQL instances

1. Change the Extended event status to Enabled.
2. Click Save settings.
3. So long as the credentials used to monitor the instances have the appropriate permissions, an extended event session will be created on each instance.

Disabling extended event sessions on all monitored SQL instances

1. Change the Extended event status to Disabled.
2. Click Save settings.
3. So long as the credentials used to monitor the instances have the appropriate permissions, any extended event sessions created by SQL Monitor will be stopped and removed.

Using Extended Events

Deadlock alerts

The existing deadlock alert (which is raised by turning on the trace flag 1222 and retrieving the deadlock from the error log file) will be replaced by a new deadlock alert.

Clicking on an instance of this deadlock alert now shows a visualization of the deadlock, which can be interacted with to better understand the causes of the deadlock: