I'm looking into purchasing a SQL Server monitoring system.
It should work with 2005/2008.
We would like to monitor performance, availability, backups, jobs and various database issues (space)
What has worked for you?
Quest Software has a product called Spotlight.
Red Gate has a product called SQL Response.
I'm currently using both SQL Response and Quest Spotlight to monitor my SQL2000+ databases. They are both good: Spotlight saves playback data which is occasionally useful (don't forget about additional overhead) and their custom SSRS map pack is really good (ex. daily subscription for job failures report). What i like about SQL Response is it's ease of installation and configuration (especially email)... and the GUI feels really intuitive.
I have yet to try out Operations Manager/System Center Operations Manager to monitor my SQL boxes.
There are two flavours of monitoring tool for SQL Server. An alerting tool which lets you know when some attention is needed, and a passive monitoring tool that can be used for live diagnostics, trending analysis, historical graphs, etc.
I haven't played with the Idera tool yet.
You could even create your own monitoring with SQL Agent and SQL Mail.