SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is an amazing tool. It has so many features that at times we don’t know half of them.

At times I have seen developers use just about 15-20 % of this tool. They basically use this just to write their T-SQL code and that’s just about it.

But apart from writing the T-SQL code and provide intellisense to your code, SSMS is really a feature packed tool.

One of the most underutilized features is the ability to register the SQL Servers under your support or development in groups.

Nowadays it is reasonable to assume that developers have to work on multiple projects. This implies that they are going to work on different servers and databases. To complicate matters further, developers may have to work on different environments like DEV, QA and PRODUCTION.

Remembering the server names or IP addresses for a reasonable number of servers can be quite challenging.

Registered servers and groups can help developers in this matter.

You can create different groups of servers and then register your servers in those groups accordingly. You can name your servers and groups too to enable you easily associate them with your projects or applications.

For example, you can create 3 different groups based on environments e.g. DEV, QA and PROD.

You can access Registered Servers from View –> Registered Servers as shown in the screen shot below.

This will open the following window.

As of now, this window is blank because till now I haven’t registered any servers in my SSMS. But as I register the servers and see this window next time, registered servers will show up here.

Now let’s see how we can register servers.

To register any server, first connect to that server in SSMS normally as you would while working on it. Once you are connected to the server, right click on the server and then click Register as shown below.

Note that I have erased the IP address of the server to which I connected from the screen shot.

This will open the Register Server window as shown below.

In this window server name will be populated automatically since you started with the connected server.

You will need to provide a registered server name. This is where you can provide the application name or project name that will help you associate the server with the application.

First test the server and then click on save.

This will save your server to the local server group as shown below.

But having all your servers in one single group may not be very effective if you have to manage or work on 100s of servers.

You need an effective grouping of the servers so that you can segregate your servers in groups.

This can be achieved using the groups in registered servers.

You can right click on Local server groups and click on New Server Group as shown below.

This will take you to the screen where you just need to enter the group name and group description as shown below. In the screen shot below I am creating a group that will host all the Production servers that I have to support.

Similarly you can create groups for QA and DEV environments.

Or if you are developer working on multiple projects and applications each using multiple database servers you can create different groups for each application.

After creating the relevant groups, now you can register servers in this group as shown below.

Using this method, you can manage your servers much more effectively reducing time it takes for you to connect to each server and saves time.