National Opinion Research Center saves over 200 percent on SQL Server management and administration with Idera

SQL Diagnostic Manager helps NORC keep tabs on SQL Server performance 24 x 7.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC), a national research organization specializing in complex surveys, data collection, and empirical analyses, is keeping their SQL Servers running at peak performance and saving thousands of dollars on SQL Server monitoring with IDERA.

Although NORC uses many types of databases, SQL Server plays a critical role in their business. The application that NORC uses to collect data for research projects runs on SQL Server. Also, much of the ll survey data that is collected is held in SQL Server databases. It is later amalgamated into a data warehouse, correlated with other data, and analyzed. NORC project managers also must continually access the SQL Server databases to check and report the progress of projects to clients.

Today, NORC keeps about 30 instances of SQL Server in operation and employs two full time DBAs. Just over a year ago, however, the SQL Server infrastructure at NORC had grown to the point that it needed a more structured, centralized management system. They had no full time DBAs on staff, SQL Server monitoring was done offshore in India, database management requests were handled by developers on a “when they could get to it” basis, and NORC was spending many thousands of dollars per month for very basic monitoring services. That is when Rick Kelly, Senior Database Systems Engineer, joined NORC.

“When I joined NORC, our first task was to get our SQL Servers under control so we could do away with our ineffective and expensive offshore monitoring. In fact, the offshore monitoring was so expensive, it was not cost effective to use on all of our SQL Servers. We realized that we needed a centralized management solution that was affordable enough for all of our SQL Servers, but that was also powerful enough to track performance and alert us immediately if there was a problem.