Optimize Azure SQL Performance

Given Microsoft Azure SQL database purchase models offer various service tiers based on Database Transaction Units (DTU), monitoring Azure SQL database DTU limits and costs should be one of your organization’s priorities.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is designed to monitor your DTU consumption, DTU utilization, and DTU limit, better allowing you to stay within your service tier’s Azure SQL database size limit. With an in-depth understanding of your Azure SQL database environment and your Azure SQL database size limit, you’ll be able to allocate your resources and budget more effectively and only pay for the service tier you need.

In addition to notifying when you’re approaching your tier’s Azure SQL database size limit, monitoring DTU limits and costs can offer you a comprehensive view of your SQL database environment during bottlenecks and slowdowns, providing invaluable data to help you get to the root of database performance issues. With an Azure SQL database monitoring tool, you can more easily see what percentage of available DTU your Azure SQL Database is consuming during day-to-day operations and whether you’re within your Azure SQL database size limit.

With such a large and complex Azure environment, analyzing and monitoring Azure SQL database performance metrics can be challenging and time-consuming.

SolarWinds DPA is built to help make the process easier by offering detailed chart data and comprehensive reports, including commonly used wait-time metrics like average wait times for a single SQL statement or multiple SQL statements, a list of elements with the longest I/O wait times, and the time of day when an element experiences the longest wait times. Highly customizable, DPA can generate reports with specified time intervals and items, making Azure SQL performance monitoring easier than ever.

Performing Azure SQL performance monitoring and creating Azure SQL database reports with DPA is simple. Just click Reports in the DPA menu, select SQL Database, and pick your report type. Reports automatically include elements with high wait times, but you can also add up to 50 specific elements by selecting User-Defined, Add, and then using the search box. To specify the time and dates the report will include, click Dates to Display.

With the detailed database monitoring metrics DPA reports provide, you can effectively identify and communicate database performance baselines and trends, allowing you to quickly detect Azure SQL database performance anomalies.

To determine if your optimization efforts were successful, track performance tuning results with DPA. You can also easily share reports and analyses with colleagues and use utilization trends to improve your organization’s resource allocation.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) helps simplify Azure SQL performance monitoring by offering templates for monitoring various databases, including Azure SQL performance monitoring templates.

Using Azure SQL Server database performance and statistics counters starts with setting up a PowerShell module and connecting to Azure Portal using your login credentials. Once the DPA Microsoft Azure SQL monitoring template is configured, it’s built to continuously monitor a range of components that can include blocked, failed, and successful connections, deadlocks, database throughput units, database size, average CPU and IO utilization, and other Azure SQL performance metrics.

DPA offers default Azure SQL Database metrics, but you can also create custom metrics. If you have a virtual machine (VM) license and register for VM monitoring, DPA will also provide many valuable VM metrics, such as VM CPU Usage Percentage and VM Memory Swap-In Rate.

The Azure SQL performance monitoring template included in DPA is highly customizable. If the default metrics don’t suit your organization’s needs, you can adjust thresholds via the Resources tab and create custom metrics to gather more insightful information. You can pinpoint bottlenecks and other issues by using custom wait-time metrics or query-based metrics.

For query-based metrics, DPA generates a metric chart showing query execution time and value and the rate of change between queries. With flexible, query-based custom metrics, you can track everything from index fragmentation to the number of page splits to the number of buffer manager pages Azure SQL database reads per second.

As this DPA template monitors Azure SQL server performance, you’ll have access to both real-time and historical data, allowing you to immediately act and resolve critical Azure SQL performance issues. In addition to providing this detailed data, this Azure SQL database performance monitor uses machine learning to detect anomalies.

DPA also collects metrics related to license compliance, such as the number of connected users, sessions, and machines connected to the Azure SQL Database. You’ll know who has access to your database and when users experience database performance issues.

With SolarWinds Azure SQL performance monitoring tool, you can even automate alerts for critical Azure SQL performance issues by using convenient and customizable email templates.

With the help of the DPA Azure SQL performance monitoring template, you’ll gain an in-depth understanding of your Azure SQL database, including performance metrics and issues. Thanks to this comprehensive Azure SQL database monitoring tool, you can establish an Azure SQL database baseline, receive critical alerts, quickly identify and resolve performance issues, improve Azure PaaS and Azure IaaS application performance, and see whether you’re within your Azure SQL database size limit, so you can budget your time and money more effectively.