Concepts

Learn the key terms and concepts you need to use QMonitor effectively.

This page explains the main concepts in QMonitor. Understanding these terms will help you set up and use QMonitor successfully.

Organization

An Organization is a container for monitored SQL Server instances and the users who manage them.

  • When you first sign up for QMonitor, you are not part of any Organization
  • You can create a new Organization or join an existing one
  • The user who creates an Organization becomes its owner
  • Owners can invite users and manage all Organization settings
  • Regular users can only view data (they cannot change settings)
  • Users can belong to multiple Organizations with different roles
  • All users in an Organization can access data from all SQL Server instances registered in that Organization
  • If you have different teams working on different sets of instances, create separate Organizations for each team

User

A User is a registered account identified by an email address. Users can join multiple Organizations and have different roles in each Organization.

Instance

An Instance represents a SQL Server instance registered in an Organization. QMonitor connects to the Instance using the connection string you provide. The connection string includes the authentication method. See the Authentication section for supported methods.

Agent

An Agent is a service that collects metrics from SQL Server instances.

  • The Agent is installed as a service on a computer in your network
  • The Agent connects to SQL Server instances assigned to it
  • If you have multiple data centers, create separate Agents for each location
  • Each Agent monitors the instances in its data center

This structure keeps monitoring traffic local and improves reliability.