Use PowerShell to monitor and scale a single database in Azure SQL Database

Applies to: Azure SQL Database

This PowerShell script example monitors the performance metrics of a single database, scales it to a higher compute size, and creates an alert rule on one of the performance metrics.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create an Azure free account before you begin.

Note

This article uses the Azure Az PowerShell module, which is the recommended PowerShell module for interacting with Azure. To get started with the Az PowerShell module, see Install Azure PowerShell. To learn how to migrate to the Az PowerShell module, see Migrate Azure PowerShell from AzureRM to Az.

Use Azure Cloud Shell

Azure hosts Azure Cloud Shell, an interactive shell environment that you can use through your browser. You can use either Bash or PowerShell with Cloud Shell to work with Azure services. You can use the Cloud Shell preinstalled commands to run the code in this article, without having to install anything on your local environment.

To start Azure Cloud Shell:

Option	Example/Link
Select Try It in the upper-right corner of a code block. Selecting Try It doesn't automatically copy the code to Cloud Shell.
Go to https://shell.azure.com, or select the Launch Cloud Shell button to open Cloud Shell in your browser.
Select the Cloud Shell button on the menu bar at the upper right in the Azure portal.

To run the code in this article in Azure Cloud Shell:

1. Start Cloud Shell.

2. Select the Copy button on a code block to copy the code.

3. Paste the code into the Cloud Shell session by selecting Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows and Linux, or by selecting Cmd+Shift+V on macOS.

4. Select Enter to run the code.

If you choose to install and use PowerShell locally, this tutorial requires Az PowerShell 1.4.0 or later. If you need to upgrade, see Install Azure PowerShell module. If you are running PowerShell locally, you also need to run Connect-AzAccount to create a connection with Azure.

Sample script

# This script requires the following
# - Az.Resources
# - Az.Accounts
# - Az.Monitor
# - Az.Sql

# First, run Connect-AzAccount

# Set the subscription in which to create these objects. This is displayed on objects in the Azure portal.
$SubscriptionId = ''
# Set the resource group name and location for your server
$resourceGroupName = "myResourceGroup-$(Get-Random)"
$location = "westus2"
# Set an admin login and password for your server
$adminSqlLogin = "SqlAdmin"
$password = (New-Guid).Guid # Generates a randomized GUID password. 
# Set server name - the logical server name has to be unique in the system
$serverName = "server-$(Get-Random)"
# The sample database name
$databaseName = "mySampleDatabase"
# The ip address range that you want to allow to access your server via the firewall rule
$startIp = "0.0.0.0"
$endIp = "0.0.0.0"

# Set subscription 
Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId 

# Create a new resource group
$resourceGroup = New-AzResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroupName -Location $location

# Create a new server with a system wide unique server name
$server = New-AzSqlServer -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -Location $location `
    -SqlAdministratorCredentials $(New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $adminSqlLogin, $(ConvertTo-SecureString -String $password -AsPlainText -Force))

# Create a server firewall rule that allows access from the specified IP range
$serverFirewallRule = New-AzSqlServerFirewallRule -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -FirewallRuleName "AllowedIPs" -StartIpAddress $startIp -EndIpAddress $endIp

# Create a blank database with an S0 performance level
$database = New-AzSqlDatabase  -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -DatabaseName $databaseName `
    -RequestedServiceObjectiveName "S0" `
    -SampleName "AdventureWorksLT"

# Monitor the DTU consumption on the database in 5 minute intervals
$MonitorParameters = @{
  ResourceId = "/subscriptions/$($(Get-AzContext).Subscription.Id)/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/$serverName/databases/$databaseName"
  TimeGrain = [TimeSpan]::Parse("00:05:00")
  MetricNames = "dtu_consumption_percent"
}
$metric = Get-AzMetric @monitorparameters
$metric.Data

# Scale the database performance to Standard S1
$database = Set-AzSqlDatabase -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $servername `
    -DatabaseName $databasename `
    -Edition "Standard" `
    -RequestedServiceObjectiveName "S1"


# Set up an Alert rule using Azure Monitor for the database
# Add an Alert that fires when the pool utilization reaches 90%
# Objects needed: An Action Group Receiver (in this case, an email group), an Action Group, Alert Criteria, and finally an Alert Rule.

# Creates an new action group receiver object with a target email address.
$receiver = New-AzActionGroupReceiver `
    -Name "my Sample Azure Admins" `
    -EmailAddress "azure-admins-group@contoso.com"

# Creates a new or updates an existing action group.
$actionGroup = Set-AzActionGroup `
    -Name "mysample-email-the-azure-admins" `
    -ShortName "AzAdminsGrp" `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -Receiver $receiver

# Fetch the created AzActionGroup into an object of type Microsoft.Azure.Management.Monitor.Models.ActivityLogAlertActionGroup
$actionGroupObject = New-AzActionGroup -ActionGroupId $actionGroup.Id

# Create a criteria for the Alert to monitor.
$criteria = New-AzMetricAlertRuleV2Criteria `
    -MetricName "dtu_consumption_percent" `
    -TimeAggregation Average `
    -Operator GreaterThan `
    -Threshold 90

# Create the Alert rule.
# Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 adds or updates a V2 (non-classic) metric-based alert rule.
Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 -Name "mySample_Alert_DTU_consumption_pct" `
        -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
        -WindowSize (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 1) `
        -Frequency (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 1) `
        -TargetResourceId "/subscriptions/$($(Get-AzContext).Subscription.Id)/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/$serverName/databases/$databaseName" `
        -Condition $criteria `
        -ActionGroup $actionGroupObject `
        -Severity 3 #Informational

<#
# Set up an alert rule using Azure Monitor for the database
# Note that Add-AzMetricAlertRule is deprecated. Use Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 instead.
Add-AzMetricAlertRule -ResourceGroup $resourceGroupName `
    -Name "MySampleAlertRule" `
    -Location $location `
    -TargetResourceId "/subscriptions/$($(Get-AzContext).Subscription.Id)/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/$serverName/databases/$databaseName" `
    -MetricName "dtu_consumption_percent" `
    -Operator "GreaterThan" `
    -Threshold 90 `
    -WindowSize $([TimeSpan]::Parse("00:05:00")) `
    -TimeAggregationOperator "Average" `
    -Action $(New-AzAlertRuleEmail -SendToServiceOwner)
#>

# Clean up deployment 
# Remove-AzResourceGroup -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName

Note

For a full list of metrics, see metrics supported.

Tip

Use Get-AzSqlDatabaseActivity to get the status of database operations and use Stop-AzSqlDatabaseActivity to cancel a database update operation.

Clean up deployment

Use the following command to remove the resource group and all resources associated with it.

Remove-AzResourceGroup -ResourceGroupName $resourcegroupname

Script explanation

This script uses the following commands. Each command in the table links to command-specific documentation.

Command	Notes
New-AzResourceGroup	Creates a resource group in which all resources are stored.
New-AzSqlServer	Creates a server that hosts a single database or elastic pool.
Get-AzMetric	Shows the size usage information for the database.
Set-AzSqlDatabase	Updates database properties or moves the database into, out of, or between elastic pools.
Add-AzMetricAlertRule	(Deprecated) Adds or updates an alert rule to automatically monitor metrics in the future. Applies only to classic metric-based alert rules.
Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2	Adds or updates an alert rule to automatically monitor metrics in the future. Applies only to non-classic metric-based alert rules.
Remove-AzResourceGroup	Deletes a resource group including all nested resources.

Next steps

For more information on Azure PowerShell, see Azure PowerShell documentation.

Additional PowerShell script samples can be found in Azure PowerShell scripts.