Monitor your SQL deployments with SQL Insights (preview)

Applies to: Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance SQL Server on Azure VM

Important

SQL Insights (preview) will be retired on 31 December 2024. We recommend that you transition to database watcher for Azure SQL (preview) or another database monitoring solution by that date.

Database watcher is the recommended monitoring solution for scenarios that require low data collection latency, estate-level monitoring, comprehensive monitoring data including query-level details, and support for advanced analytics on collected monitoring data. At this time, database watcher supports Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance.

After 31 December 2024, SQL Insights (preview) will not be supported and will not be available in the Azure portal. You will retain any existing monitoring data collected by SQL Insights in your Log Analytics workspace.

SQL Insights (preview) is a monitoring solution for products in the Azure SQL family. SQL Insights uses dynamic management views to expose the data that you need to monitor health, diagnose problems, and tune performance.

SQL Insights performs all monitoring remotely. Monitoring agents on dedicated virtual machines connect to your SQL resources and remotely gather data. The gathered data is stored in Azure Monitor Logs to enable easy aggregation, filtering, and trend analysis. You can view the collected data from the SQL Insights workbook template, or you can delve directly into the data by using log queries.

The following diagram details the steps taken by information from the database engine and Azure resource logs, and how they can be surfaced. For a more detailed diagram of Azure SQL logging, see Monitoring and diagnostic telemetry.

Pricing

There's no direct cost for SQL Insights (preview). All costs are incurred by the virtual machines that gather the data, the Log Analytics workspaces that store the data, and any alert rules configured on the data.

Virtual machines

For virtual machines, you're charged based on the pricing published on the virtual machines pricing page. The number of virtual machines that you need varies based on the number of connection strings you want to monitor. We recommend allocating one virtual machine of size Standard_B2s for every 100 connection strings. For more information, see Azure virtual machine requirements.

Log Analytics workspaces

For the Log Analytics workspaces, you're charged based on the pricing published on the Azure Monitor pricing page. The Log Analytics workspaces that SQL Insights uses incur costs for data ingestion, data retention, and (optionally) data export.

Exact charges vary based on the amount of data ingested, retained, and exported. The amount of this data varies based on your database activity and the collection settings defined in your monitoring profiles.

Alert rules

For alert rules in Azure Monitor, you're charged based on the pricing published on the Azure Monitor pricing page. If you choose to create alerts with SQL Insights (preview), you're charged for any alert rules created and any notifications sent.

Supported versions

SQL Insights (preview) supports the following environments:

• Azure SQL Database
• Azure SQL Managed Instance
• SQL Server 2012 and later versions running on:
  • SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines (SQL Server installed on virtual machines registered with the SQL IaaS Agent extension)
  • Azure VMs (SQL Server installed on virtual machines not registered with the SQL IaaS Agent extension)

SQL Insights (preview) has no support or has limited support for the following:

• Non-Azure instances: SQL Server running on environments outside of Azure isn't supported, including on-premises and virtual machines.
• Azure SQL Database elastic pools: Metrics can't be gathered for elastic pools or for databases within elastic pools.
• Azure SQL Database low service tiers: Metrics can't be gathered for databases on Basic, S0, S1, and S2 service tiers.
• Azure SQL Database serverless tier: Metrics can be gathered for databases through the serverless compute tier. However, the process of gathering metrics resets the autopause delay timer, preventing the database from entering an autopaused state.
• Secondary replicas: Metrics can be gathered for only a single secondary replica per database. If a database has more than one secondary replica, only one can be monitored.
• Authentication with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory): The only supported method of authentication for monitoring is SQL authentication. For SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines, authentication through Active Directory on a custom domain controller isn't supported.

Regional availability

SQL Insights (preview) is available in all Azure regions where Azure Monitor is available, except for Azure Government and national clouds.

Open SQL Insights

To open SQL Insights (preview):

1. In the Azure portal, go to the Azure Monitor menu.
2. In the Insights section, select SQL (preview).
3. Select a tile to load the experience for the SQL resource that you're monitoring.

For more instructions, see Enable SQL Insights (preview) and Troubleshoot SQL Insights (preview).

Note

On-premises SQL Server instances are not currently supported by SQL Insights (preview) - the label in the Azure portal can be ignored.

Collected data

SQL Insights performs all monitoring remotely. No agents are installed on the virtual machines running SQL Server.

SQL Insights uses dedicated monitoring virtual machines to remotely collect data from your SQL resources. Each monitoring virtual machine has the Azure Monitor agent and the Workload Insights (WLI) extension installed.

The WLI extension includes the open-source Telegraf agent. SQL Insights uses data collection rules to specify the data collection settings for Telegraf's SQL Server plug-in.

Different sets of data are available for Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server. The following tables describe the available data. You can customize which datasets to collect and the frequency of collection when you create a monitoring profile.

The tables have the following columns:

• Friendly name: Name of the query as shown in the Azure portal when you're creating a monitoring profile.
• Configuration name: Name of the query as shown in the Azure portal when you're editing a monitoring profile.
• Namespace: Name of the query as found in a Log Analytics workspace. This identifier appears in the InsighstMetrics table on the Namespace property in the Tags column.
• DMVs: Dynamic managed views that are used to produce the dataset.
• Enabled by default: Whether the data is collected by default.
• Default collection frequency: How often the data is collected by default.

Data for Azure SQL Database

Friendly name	Configuration name	Namespace	DMVs	Enabled by default	Default collection frequency
DB wait stats	AzureSQLDBWaitStats	sqlserver_azuredb_waitstats	sys.dm_db_wait_stats	No	Not applicable
DBO wait stats	AzureSQLDBOsWaitstats	sqlserver_waitstats	sys.dm_os_wait_stats	Yes	60 seconds
Memory clerks	AzureSQLDBMemoryClerks	sqlserver_memory_clerks	sys.dm_os_memory_clerks	Yes	60 seconds
Database I/O	AzureSQLDBDatabaseIO	sqlserver_database_io	sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats sys.database_files tempdb.sys.database_files	Yes	60 seconds
Server properties	AzureSQLDBServerProperties	sqlserver_server_properties	sys.dm_os_job_object sys.database_files sys.databases sys.database_service_objectives	Yes	60 seconds
Performance counters	AzureSQLDBPerformanceCounters	sqlserver_performance	sys.dm_os_performance_counters sys.databases	Yes	60 seconds
Resource stats	AzureSQLDBResourceStats	sqlserver_azure_db_resource_stats	sys.dm_db_resource_stats	Yes	60 seconds
Resource governance	AzureSQLDBResourceGovernance	sqlserver_db_resource_governance	sys.dm_user_db_resource_governance	Yes	60 seconds
Requests	AzureSQLDBRequests	sqlserver_requests	sys.dm_exec_sessions sys.dm_exec_requests sys.dm_exec_sql_text	No	Not applicable
Schedulers	AzureSQLDBSchedulers	sqlserver_schedulers	sys.dm_os_schedulers	No	Not applicable

Data for Azure SQL Managed Instance

Friendly name	Configuration name	Namespace	DMVs	Enabled by default	Default collection frequency
Wait stats	AzureSQLMIOsWaitstats	sqlserver_waitstats	sys.dm_os_wait_stats	Yes	60 seconds
Memory clerks	AzureSQLMIMemoryClerks	sqlserver_memory_clerks	sys.dm_os_memory_clerks	Yes	60 seconds
Database I/O	AzureSQLMIDatabaseIO	sqlserver_database_io	sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats sys.master_files	Yes	60 seconds
Server properties	AzureSQLMIServerProperties	sqlserver_server_properties	sys.server_resource_stats	Yes	60 seconds
Performance counters	AzureSQLMIPerformanceCounters	sqlserver_performance	sys.dm_os_performance_counters sys.databases	Yes	60 seconds
Resource stats	AzureSQLMIResourceStats	sqlserver_azure_db_resource_stats	sys.server_resource_stats	Yes	60 seconds
Resource governance	AzureSQLMIResourceGovernance	sqlserver_instance_resource_governance	sys.dm_instance_resource_governance	Yes	60 seconds
Requests	AzureSQLMIRequests	sqlserver_requests	sys.dm_exec_sessions sys.dm_exec_requests sys.dm_exec_sql_text	No	NA
Schedulers	AzureSQLMISchedulers	sqlserver_schedulers	sys.dm_os_schedulers	No	Not applicable

Data for SQL Server

Friendly name	Configuration name	Namespace	DMVs	Enabled by default	Default collection frequency
Wait stats	SQLServerWaitStatsCategorized	sqlserver_waitstats	sys.dm_os_wait_stats	Yes	60 seconds
Memory clerks	SQLServerMemoryClerks	sqlserver_memory_clerks	sys.dm_os_memory_clerks	Yes	60 seconds
Database I/O	SQLServerDatabaseIO	sqlserver_database_io	sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats sys.master_files	Yes	60 seconds
Server properties	SQLServerProperties	sqlserver_server_properties	sys.dm_os_sys_info	Yes	60 seconds
Performance counters	SQLServerPerformanceCounters	sqlserver_performance	sys.dm_os_performance_counters	Yes	60 seconds
Volume space	SQLServerVolumeSpace	sqlserver_volume_space	sys.master_files	Yes	60 seconds
SQL Server CPU	SQLServerCpu	sqlserver_cpu	sys.dm_os_ring_buffers	Yes	60 seconds
Schedulers	SQLServerSchedulers	sqlserver_schedulers	sys.dm_os_schedulers	No	Not applicable
Requests	SQLServerRequests	sqlserver_requests	sys.dm_exec_sessions sys.dm_exec_requests sys.dm_exec_sql_text	No	Not applicable
Availability replica states	SQLServerAvailabilityReplicaStates	sqlserver_hadr_replica_states	sys.dm_hadr_availability_replica_states sys.availability_replicas sys.availability_groups sys.dm_hadr_availability_group_states	No	60 seconds
Availability database replicas	SQLServerDatabaseReplicaStates	sqlserver_hadr_dbreplica_states	sys.dm_hadr_database_replica_states sys.availability_replicas	No	60 seconds

Related content

• Frequently asked questions
• Monitor and performance tuning in Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Managed Instance