This information is based on testing at Redgate. The performance might be different in your environment.

Base monitor machine

The base monitor machine runs the service that monitors the machines and instances you monitor in SQL Monitor.

• Processor
  3 GHz dual core should be sufficient to monitor 10 servers (a server is defined as a host machine plus single SQL Server instance).
• Physical memory
  2 GB RAM should be sufficient to run SQL Monitor and Windows OS and other small applications. The SQL Monitor process itself uses approximately 400 to 900 MB, depending on the number of servers you monitor.

Monitoring more servers requires a more powerful machine. In our testing, a 64-bit dual quad-core processor machine with 8 GB of RAM monitors 30+ machines comfortably.

Growth in size of data repository database

The data repository is the SQL Server database that stores all data collected by SQL Monitor for all monitored machines and instances.

• Expect the database to use up to 150 MB per server (host machine plus single SQL Server instance) per day.
• 10 servers over 7 days will therefore increase the database size by approximately 10 GB.

Creating the data repository database

Before you install SQL Monitor, we recommend you create the Data Repository database manually using a SQL Server management tool with settings appropriate to your environment. This means you can estimate the eventual size of your data repository based on the guidelines above, and set fixed autogrowth and transaction log size relative to your database size. It should help prevent autogrowths, which can damage performance and contribute to physical file fragmentation. For more information, see Manage the Size of the Transaction Log File (MSDN documentation).

You can allow SQL Monitor to create the Data Repository for you using the model database on your SQL Server system as a template. If the model database defaults are insufficient for the estimated eventual size of your database, consider creating the database manually instead. For more information about the model database defaults, see model Database.

The database is created by SQL Monitor using the SIMPLE recovery model. If you change to FULL recovery model, the database growth will be much greater.

Network bandwidth impact on monitored servers

Total network traffic (inbound plus outbound) is 10 KB/sec per server.

A server is defined as a host machine plus a single SQL Server instance. For multiple instances, the impact will be slightly greater per additional instance. For servers with a large number of objects (eg 200 databases and 20,000 tables), the total network traffic may be up to 20 KB/sec.