SQL Fool Adventures in SQL Tuning – a blog for the rest of us

Registered Servers in SSMS

In my last blog post, I discussed changing the color of the status bar in SSMS 2008. I received a couple of comments and even an e-mail discussing how this doesn't seem to always work. After playing with it for a little bit, I've found that the status bar color needs to be set in both Query->Connection->Connect/Change Connection... (here-in referred to as simply the Query menu) and Registered Servers.

Let's run through this. First, connect to an instance with any color using the Query menu.

Now, create a new registered server. Make sure to use the same server.








Pick a color, but make sure that it's different than the previous color. This is just for demonstration purposes only. Since the whole point is to have a consistent color, you would normally use the same color in both connection methods for the same server.





Open a new query window via Registered Servers.








Here's what happens when I connect to the same server using both Registered Servers (left) and another window using the Query menu (right).

For anyone who's using both the Query menu and Registered Servers to connect to servers, then you should walk through the process of connecting to each server via both means and changing the colors to ensure consistency. I did this for 22 servers and it took me less than 10 minutes.

I hope that helps clear up some of the confusion.

Source: http://sqlfool.com/2009/03/registered-servers-in-ssms/