I’ll be honest, I was *really* looking forward to using the Utility Control Point feature in SQL 2008 R2. I wanted to give the UCP a test drive, kick the tires, and get out on the open road. I even started asking around to see if we could get our hands on the shiny new Data Center edition of SQL Server 2008 R2, because I have a lot more than 25 instances here and I know that I need that version in order to assign them all to one UCP.
And just as I was getting started I found myself overcome with emotions. First was shock and denial (“no, that can’t be true”), followed by pain (“this hurts”), then anger (“&@$&%^@%”), loneliness (“I don’t have any more”), and finally acceptance (“well, I guess that is how it is going to be”).
I am talking about, of course, the fact that the UCP is only for SQL 2008 R2 instances:
In this release, the UCP and all managed instances of SQL Server must satisfy the following requirements: SQL Server must be version 10.50 or higher.
Yeah, they did.
So if I want to start using the UCP I will need to get two instances of SQL 2008 R2 running (one to be the UCP, and the other to be registered in the UCP). What are the chances of me having multiple instances of R2 up and running in my shop before the end of the year? Very little. What are the chances of me having one instance of R2 up and running? Also very little. What were the chances of me having at least one because I thought I could start using the UCP against at least my existing SQL 2008 instances? Those chances were very high, actually. But right now I don’t see any reason for me to be in a hurry to have R2 deployed.
And that’s too bad, because I was really excited about using the UCP. I don’t know why the UCP is exclusive to R2, but by doing so it doesn’t make me want to push people to upgrade/migrate to R2 any faster. In fact, chances are I’ll just wait for SQL 11 to be released instead of dragging people to R2.
But first it would be nice to get rid of SQL 2000. If only there was a good way to effectively monitor and control those systems from a common point…
It seems we were both playing with the same feature over the last few days.
I got a 2008 R2 instance all up and running in my test lab and went to add another instance to my UCP and hit that very same message about the version of the instance I was trying to add.
*sigh*
It’s as disappointing as the Boston Bruins right now…. C’MON BOSTON pull your heads out of your…….
sorry I went a bit off topic there LOL
thanks Colin. are the Oilers enjoying their tee times?
I hit the same problem, so am monitoring my R2 instance from itself :-s
IIRC when I was trying to enroll a 2008 instance it complained about there not being certain sp’s on the target, could we not try to extract the correct sp’s and work from there…
yeah, i suppose we *could* try that, but i suspect it won’t work for some reason or another. and honestly i don’t see why i should bother at this point, it just isn’t worth the effort for me to hack my way through this when i already have other monitoring tools in place. there is no real compelling reason for me to go through the extra work at this point. i wish there was, but i don’t see the value right now.
Hey I’m pulling for the Bruins… cause god knows I don’t want Montreal to get any further LOL
No reason to attack my poor Oilers like that hahaha and yes they are enjoying their tee times… they did get first crack at the best ones 😉 much like getting first crack at the draft this year 🙂
Im having a bit of a play with it at the moment, not really got much monitoring in place on our db’s at the mo so would be nice to have it
I had heard that this will be available for SQL Server 2008 with the release of SP2.
For SQL Server 2005 – an adventurous person could look at populating the database with stats since this is aimed at trending the data. No idea on the feasibility of doing this though.
Actually, Microsoft has announced that you will be able to enroll SQL Server 2008 SP2 instances into the Utility Control Point.
Thanks Glenn, do you have a link to share with us? Also, I’m looking forward to your talk next Wednesday!
I am in a UG meeting right now, with a presenter from Microsoft, who says they have tested UCP with 2008, and it works.
so, it works with SQL 2008 SP1? or that it *will* work with SP2? Regardless of that, the MSDN entries need to be updated, as they document that it is R2 only at this time.