Minion Enterprise 2.2

Minion Enterprise 2.2 is a big jump forward, with user cloning, new collections, bug fixes, and so very much more. Here is a brief list of updates:

  • Improved collection speed by 80%
  • Clone users - This module allows you to completely script and clone logins, with associated users and permissions, to one or more servers in the environment. (See User Scripting and Cloning.) 
  • Script logins - The Logins module pulls SQL Server login information from managed servers. This gives you a record of all logins – and their create date, default database, language, login type, policy enforcement, and more – for the entire enterprise. This is the foundation for a huge amount of security-related functionality, including research, alerts, and audits. (See User Scripting and Cloning.)
  • Script database objects to the repository database, to the file system, or both.
  • Script jobs - The Script Jobs module fully scripts out SQL Agent jobs on a regular schedule. Jobs can be scripted to the database, file system, or both.
  • Expanded the database properties collection.
  • Collect instance properties to the Collector.InstanceProperties table.
  • Enhanced alerts - Alerts have more expansive defer and exception capabilities, and a brand new night mode!
  • New administrator role login alert - Receilve alerts when logins join or leave admin roles in SQL Server.
  • New SMB shares collection.
  • Track drive capacity change report.
  • Predict drive space report. (See Managing and Projecting Disk Space.)
  • Predict file size report.
  • Predict table size reports.
  • New Availability Group collections.
  • Searchable online documentation.
​-March 2016

Minion Enterprise 2.1

MinionWare is proud to announce Minion Enterprise 2.1! The newest version of our SQL Server management solution comes with all the newest features that we demonstrated in the Introduction to Minion Enterprise Webinar, including the Active Directory Expansion module, and the Index Stats module. ME 2.1 also now gathers the full set of table properties.

Active Directory Expansion Module

Minion Enterprise collects SQL Server login data, as well as Active Directory information, for an entire enterprise. The AD expansion module ties this data together to provide so much insight, which is next to impossible to get for most shops:

  • Find out what users are in a Windows group…especially those groups that have sysadmin privileges!
  • List all users that have administrator rights on any instance in the environment.
  • Discover which SQL Server instances a specific user has access to, and via what groups.
  • Filter by environment, location, SLA, server, login type, or any combination of the data available.

Thanks to the AD Expansion module, a junior DBA at one client’s office was able to complete a security audit on 40 servers, in a single morning.

Another client was recently able to reduce their SQL Server access on one server by two-thirds. They simply used the AD Expansion module to identify the rogue group with hundreds of members, and then remove that group’s rights!

Index Stats Module

Database administrators can now research detailed index information collected by the Index Stats module. It collects all data from the native catalog view (sys.indexes), plus the list of indexed columns, included columns, and more. This allows a DBA to perform detailed, enterprise-wide index analysis.

Conduct index research across multiple servers to find, among other things:

  • Clustered GUIDs
  • Heaps
  • Duplicate indexes
  • Near-duplicate indexes
  • Low use indexes
  • Missing indexes
  • High use tables with no nonclustered indexes
-July 2015