For monitoring I much prefer SQL Sentry's tool (Performance Advisor) over
both Quest's and Idera's offerings.

I use Red Gate's product for backups (where I don't just use native), and am
completely satisfied with it, though I never did any due diligence comparing
it to LiteSpeed.

I would never get everything from one vendor for some perceived simplicity.
If that vendor had the best tool in each category, then maybe, but that is
not the case here in my opinion.  So for the high end products you're not
going to save much money and even less hassle by sticking to one vendor (and
potentially suffering in the long run by taking an inferior product in one
discipline because they had a better product in another).

Of course, my real world advice, or the next guy's, or anyone's for that
matter, does not really dictate that your experience will be the same.
Instead of picking what you believe to be the best products for each task,
why don't you try them in a real world scenario, so you know if they work
for you?  The big ticket items all have trial editions, and this is exactly
what they are for...

On 8/26/08 6:07 PM, in article
A162E3CC-0A7E-4B4D-A443-FD57689F964B@microsoft.com, "Sammy"

You might also want to consider looking at HyperBac for backups.  Personally
I am not using it in production, even though it compared favorably to
RedGate, but only because we already had an investment in RedGate (both
license costs and automation around it).  There are some advantages it has
over others that may be valuable in your case, for example fewer
services/XPs, and an easier transition to native backups when you move to
2008+ (since commands are native).

Basically, you should not just pick the product you think is best because of
your perception, how often you've heard the name, or what some yonker like
me in a newsgroup might say about it... You should actually try them,
because no matter what you read or hear, your experience in your environment
might be completely different.

On 8/26/08 6:07 PM, in article
A162E3CC-0A7E-4B4D-A443-FD57689F964B@microsoft.com, "Sammy"

Sammy - depending on what you are looking for on the monitoring
portion you may want to have a look at xSQL Profiler (http://
www.xsqlsoftware.com/Product/xSQL_Profiler.aspx) - it allows you to
define traces and schedule them to run on multiple servers at
predefined times - it automatically collects all the trace data from
the target servers into the central repository where you can query it.
It does not need any agents on the target servers so you can deploy in
minutes. It is simple - no bells and whistles.

I hope this helps.

JC
xSQL Software
http://www.xsqlsoftware.com