In many cases you will want to reorganize how your SQL Servers (or Instances) are listed in Enterprise Manager. To make organizing your SQL Servers simpler, Enterprise Manager allows you to create Server Groups. Creating a new group is not complicated…start by right clicking “Microsoft SQL Server” on the Enterprise Manager tree.
Select “New SQL Server Group…” from the popup menu.
The Server Groups screen allows you to create new groups as Top level (under “Microsoft SQL Server”) or as a Sub-group under an existing group.
Enter a name for the group in the “Name:” textbox and click OK.
You can continue to add Groups and Sub-groups until you have the ideal layout for your organization.
Modifying Server Registrations
To access an instance of SQL Server in Enterprise Manager you must first register the server. When you install SQL Server, setup automatically registers the instance in Enterprise Manager. If you need to move a SQL Server Registration to another group in Enterprise Manager or if you need to update the authentication information you can simply right click the server in the Enterprise Manager tree and select “Edit SQL Server Registration Properties…”
To change the group the server is listed under, select another group name from the “Server Group:” drop-down list.
The “Display SQL Server state in console” checkbox allows you to enable or disable the automatic display of status icons. If you disable this option the server’s icon will appear without a status indicator when you open Enterprise Manager.
The “Show system databases and system objects” checkbox will allow you to hide system objects. System objects include system databases, tables, stored procedures, etc… (more on system databases later in the next article)
Finally, the “Automatically start SQL Server when connecting” checkbox will automatically start the SQL Server service if the server is stopped when you try connecting.
Once you have made your changes click OK.