SQL Sentry Templated Dashboards
SQL Sentry Templated Dashboards
Staff Customer Success Engineer
Nov 14, 2024
In my last blog post, I dove into SQL Sentry's custom dashboards, and now I'm excited to share the Templated Dashboards feature from the latest release. This feature brings new flexibility, allowing users to create custom dashboards and making scalability a breeze for a single server and multiple servers.
I'm planning a series to highlight some creative and innovative dashboard designs, but today, let's focus on dashboards for SQL Managed Instance, Amazon Relational Database Service, and servers with security restrictions limiting operating system level visibility.
Having worked with SQL Sentry for years, I've seen firsthand the increasing demand for cloud solutions, especially when it comes to Managed Instances. Many customers ask if we can integrate with Azure Monitor Metrics Explorer or Amazon CloudWatch, which we've been reviewing. However, a common question is, "What can I do right now?"
A great starting point is using dashboards to monitor CPU usage by database, application, query, or host. While this won't offer the same in-depth insights as Amazon CloudWatch or Azure Monitor Metrics Explorer, it still provides valuable visibility into key metrics that were previously hard to track.
Creating a Dashboard for Database CPU
You'll find a section for Templated Dashboard in the Dashboard Section.
- Go ahead and select it. For this example, we'll choose the
Sub-category: SQL Server.
- Add the generic counters: Activity, Waits, Memory, I/O
- Next, go to Custom Metric and search for the metric: CPU.
- You should now see the Dashboard Selection at the top of the screen.
Summary
SQL Sentry's Templated Dashboards feature opens exciting possibilities for monitoring and managing SQL Server environments across diverse infrastructures. This addition not only supports single-server customization but also enables scaling of insights across multiple instances, whether on-premises or in the cloud.
The ability to design specialized dashboards for SQL Managed Instance, Amazon Relational Database Service, and servers with limited operating system-level access provides administrators with a powerful tool to maximize visibility and control.