Technical Requirements for DBSmart

1. Requirements for remote access

This is what we will need in order to be able to provide you with the best support, quickly and efficiently:

• A secured VPN connection into your network, so that we could troubleshoot issues remotely
• RDP connection (user and password) to all the relevant database servers
• SQL Server access with sysadmin privileges to all the relevant instances

2. Requirements for monitoring

If you choose DBCare, which includes our comprehensive monitoring system, then we are going to install our monitoring service in your network. Here are the requirements:

• We need a server to run the monitoring service. Preferably, this should not be the same server as one of the servers we want to monitor.
• Hardware and software minimum requirements for the monitoring server:
  • CPU: 2 cores of 1.6 GHz
  • RAM: 8 GB
  • Available disk space: 50GB
  • Operating system: Windows Server 2008 or higher, Windows 7 or higher
• The monitoring service collects configuration and performance data (not business or user data) from your databases and sends it to our repository in the cloud. In order to send the data, we need a specific TCP port, opened in one direction - from the monitoring server to our cloud repository. All data sent through that port is encrypted.
• In case the monitoring service fails to connect to the repository in order to raise an alert, it will send us an email instead. This email is very important because it means something went wrong, so the email will create a high priority ticket in our system and call one of our agents immediately. For that, we need to have an open SMTP port from the monitoring server.
• Add our repository server IP address to the hosts file on the monitoring server.
• Create a local or domain Windows account on the monitoring server and on all the monitored servers. Important: If you're creating it as a local account, the same user and password must be used on all servers. This user must have admin permissions on all servers (monitoring server and all monitored servers). This user is used for monitoring metrics and events at the Operating System level.
• On all monitored SQL Server instances, create a Windows Authentication login in SQL Server for the new Windows account you have just created, and add the new login to the sysadmin fixed server role.
  • If you must, you may also create a SQL Authentication login. But based on Cyber Security best practices, it’s strongly recommended to use Windows Authentication (where possible).
  • If your monitored targets are Azure SQL Databases / Elastic Pool / Synapse DW, please refer to the documentation here for security requirements: https://docs.sentryone.com/help/azure-sql-database-and-data-warehouse-security
  • If your monitored targets are Amazon RDS, please refer to the documentation here for security requirements: https://docs.sentryone.com/help/aws-rds#AddingRDSTarget
• All relevant ports should be accessible from the monitoring service machine and to all monitored SQL Server instances. Including the SQL TCP port and WMI ports. For more details on this, please visit official SQL Sentry documentation.

Privacy Policy

We understand that the requirements outlined above require high-level exposure to us in terms of system security. However, we assure you that your sensitive information is kept safe using the highest possible standards, is not given to any third party, and is not used for anything other than allowing us to provide you with the highest quality of managed database services.

We are of course bound by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), and use cutting edge encryption methodologies.

We can also be flexible up to a certain point for the purpose of upholding the security constraints of our customers.

Thank you for your cooperation,

The DBSmart Team