SQL Probe is a little buggy although it didn't cause any problems on my SQL Servers.  I ran into a very difficult connectivity problem connecting to one of my 7.0 servers.  I also ran into several instances where I got error messages that it couldn't locate a database when I clicked on a particular database to look at details.  If I had two servers registered (A and B) where B had a Northwind database and A didn't, from time to time when I would click on a database like pubs on A, it would throw an error message stating that it could not locate the Northwind database on Server A.  Well....  No kidding since this database does not exist on that server and it wasn't even the one that I clicked on.  I'm still not clear why SQL Probe would try to access a database that clearly doesn't exist on a server and that wasn't the database I selected.  Clearing up the database error was simply a matter of shutting down SQL Probe and restarting.  The error would resurface though.  SQL Probe is designed to stay up and running on your desktop 24x7.  Due to the errors that I encountered, I'd suggest shutting it down at least once a day and restarting it to minimize the number of erroneous error messages.

SQL Probe is a relatively solid product that can streamline your monitoring.  I think it can add value to your environment and simplify the normal administrative tasks.  On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being a tool I couldn't live without, I would give SQL Probe a 6.

It is a good start on a much needed tool, but it has only scratched the surface in terms of feature set and polish.  There are several dozen enhancements that I would make to SQL Probe to turn this into a serious production tool.  A trained DBA without any special tools should be able to monitor between 5 and 10 servers without a problem.  (Depending upon the activity of that server.)  SQL Probe would probably push this into the 15 - 20 server range before it topped out.  The only problem is that this would be real time monitoring.  The major failing is that is doesn't give you any capability to look at the state of the server in the past as any good monitoring package should allow.  There is no trending capability and the stats that are tracked on an historical basis are virtually useless.  Need to find the growth over time to determine when to resize a database or add disk space?  You still need to do his yourself since even this basic information is not tracked.  This limits SQL Probe to being able to tell you what is running and what isn't within your environment.  

With the monitoring package I use in most environments, I can monitor and keep between 80 and 150 SQL Servers running with a single DBA.  Most of this has to do with streamlining the data and bringing it all together at one console with the minimum amount of work.  The main underpinnings of this is keeping a full historical record of server activity so that a DBA can troubleshoot problems.

I'd give this tool a strong look, but it needs major improvement before I would purchase it for my environment.  SQL Probe 7.0.44 is produced by Subquery Innovations, Inc..

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