Health Summary
Page description
This page provides a consolidated health view of a SQL Server instance and its related Windows host. It brings together CPU, memory, and disk consumption, key engine counters such as Buffer Cache Hit Ratio and Page Life Expectancy, version and support status, recent errors, backup and job health, and overall high-availability status.
It is intended to work as an operational review point for quickly detecting resource pressure, performance degradation, recurring incidents, and maintenance deviations. It combines quick-read indicators, time trends, and detailed tables to support technical prioritization and initial analysis.
Variables
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
$SQL_Instance | SQL Server instance used by the main dashboard panels. Its value corresponds to the single instance selected at the top of the page. |
| Time range | Time interval applied to time-dependent panels such as trends, errors, jobs, and historical reviews. |
$SQL_Instance
This section groups the main health summary for the selected instance. It combines immediate capacity and performance indicators with trend charts for CPU, memory, and data growth.
Description
- Description: Text panel that summarizes the functional scope of the page and the health domains covered by the dashboard.
- Panel type: text
Practical recommendation: Use this description as a quick scope reference before interpreting isolated alerts or individual trends.
CPU
- Description: Shows server CPU usage percentage. As an operational reference for this dashboard, it is preferable to keep it below 50% and to prioritize sustained periods of high utilization.
- Panel type: stat
- Units: Percent (%)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Remaining values | Usage is within the recommended range. | |
| > 50 | Usage is elevated and should be monitored. | |
| > 75 | CPU usage is critical. |
Practical recommendation: If it stays high for long periods, review expensive queries, concurrent processes, peak-hour maintenance, and CPU pressure not directly caused by SQL Server.
Buffer Cache HR
- Description: Indicates the percentage of data pages that SQL Server can resolve from memory cache instead of reading from disk. The closer it is to 100%, the lower the dependency on physical I/O and the better the memory behavior.
- Panel type: stat
- Units: Percent (%)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Remaining values | Cache is not absorbing the workload well. | |
| > 98 | Acceptable level, but the trend should be watched. | |
| > 99 | Optimal cache behavior. |
Practical recommendation: If it stays low over time, review memory pressure, max server memory, and workloads with heavy physical reads.
Page Life Expectancy
- Description: Measures how long pages remain in memory before being replaced, in seconds. Higher values usually indicate lower memory pressure on the buffer pool.
- Panel type: stat
- Units: Seconds (s)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Remaining values | Memory pressure is high. | |
| > 2000 | Mid-level value, review stability. | |
| > 3000 | Page retention is favorable. |
Practical recommendation: If it drops sharply and repeatedly, correlate it with I/O spikes, workload changes, or overly aggressive memory settings.
Data File Size by Database
- Description: Charts the evolution of data-file size by database so growth trends and future capacity needs can be identified early.
- Panel type: timeseries
- Units: Kilobytes (KB)
Thresholds:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Remaining values | Growth remains within expected behavior. | |
| > 80 | Value is high and growth or autogrowth should be reviewed. |
Practical recommendation: Identify the databases with the steepest growth and adjust capacity and autogrowth settings before frequent automatic expansions begin.
Less Disk Space
- Description: Shows the lowest free-space percentage across the server disks. It is a quick indicator of capacity risk and possible operational impact caused by low storage.
- Panel type: stat
- Units: Percent (%)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Remaining values | Free space is critical. | |
| > 10 | Free space is low and needs close follow-up. | |
| > 20 | Free space is in the recommended range. |
Practical recommendation: If it drops below 20%, prioritize cleanup, review data and log growth, and plan expansion before it reaches a critical zone.
Update Status
- Description: Reports the instance update status. The panel itself indicates that at least 24 hours must have passed since monitoring was enabled for the value to be reliable.
- Panel type: stat
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Pending Security Update | A security update is pending. | |
| Available Update | An update is available. | |
| Updated | The instance is updated. | |
| Urgent Update - Withdrawn Version | The version requires urgent action. |
Practical recommendation: If the status is not Updated, review the patching policy and plan the latest compatible cumulative update for the next maintenance window.
Supported
- Description: Shows whether the SQL Server version is still within the support lifecycle.
- Panel type: stat
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| No data | There is no conclusive information. | |
| Not Supported | The version is out of support. | |
| Supported | The version is supported. |
Practical recommendation: If the instance is not supported, prioritize an upgrade plan to reduce vulnerability risk and official support limitations.
% Processor Time
- Description: Time series of CPU usage split into privileged time, user time, and interrupt time. It helps distinguish workload pressure from kernel activity or hardware and driver related issues.
- Panel type: timeseries
- Units: Percent (%)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| % Priviledged Time | CPU used by kernel operations. | |
| % User Time | CPU used by user processes, including SQL Server. | |
| % Interrupt Time | CPU used by system interrupts. |
Practical recommendation: If % Interrupt Time rises, review drivers, firmware, and hardware health; if % User Time dominates, focus the analysis on queries, concurrency, and engine processes.
SQL Server Memory Usage
- Description: Shows the evolution of available memory and system memory pools to assess memory pressure on the host where SQL Server is running.
- Panel type: timeseries
- Units: Memory (bytes)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Pool Paged Bytes | System paged memory. | |
| Pool Nonpaged Bytes | System nonpaged memory. | |
| Available Bytes | Memory available for processes. |
Practical recommendation: If Available Bytes drops for long periods, review max server memory so the operating system and auxiliary processes still have enough memory.
Windows Memory Usage
- Description: Measures memory committed by server applications to complete the overall operating-system memory picture.
- Panel type: timeseries
- Units: Memory (bytes)
Colors by value:
| Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Committed Bytes | Memory committed by host applications. |
Practical recommendation: If Committed Bytes keeps growing while available memory drops, review SQL Server memory caps, operating system paging, and possible memory leaks in other services.
Error Log
This section concentrates the SQL Server errors recorded within the selected time range so recurring incidents and recent critical events can be detected more easily.
Error Log
- Description: Table of SQL Server error-log entries grouped by message, with total occurrence count, first occurrence, and last occurrence in the selected period.
- Panel type: table
Practical recommendation: Prioritize repetitive messages or those seen recently, and correlate them with deployments, maintenance work, or connectivity issues.
Backups
This section shows the detected backup strategy and per-database detail to validate that Full, Differential, and Log backups properly support recovery objectives.
Backup Strategy
- Description: Summarizes the current backup strategy inferred from backups recorded in the last 15 days.
- Panel type: stat
Practical recommendation: Verify that the detected strategy is aligned with target RPO and RTO values and with each database recovery model.
Last Backups
- Description: Table with the latest Full, Differential, and Log backup date for each database, together with the overall backup status.
- Panel type: table
Colors by value:
| Column | Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backup State | Backup Full Inexistente | No usable or recent Full backup exists. | |
| Backup Full demasiado Antiguo | The Full backup is outside the expected window. | ||
| Problema con la cadena de Backup | Backup continuity is not correct. | ||
| OK* | Backup status is correct. |
Practical recommendation: If any database is not in OK state, validate the latest Full backup first and, for FULL recovery databases, the log-backup continuity.
Auxiliar Backup Error History
This section complements backup review with recent history of incidents detected in backup operations.
Backup History Errors
- Description: Lists databases with backup issues, including recovery model, latest backup dates, and the detected error.
- Panel type: table
Practical recommendation: Review whether the same error repeats over several consecutive days, and fix first the cases that compromise the log chain or the absence of a Full backup.
Jobs
This section separates SQL Server Agent failures into jobs that do not usually fail and jobs with habitual failure patterns, helping distinguish new incidents from chronic issues.
Not Usually Failed Jobs
- Description: Shows failed jobs in the selected period that normally do not fail.
- Panel type: table
Practical recommendation: Treat them as priority because they usually reflect recent changes in permissions, connectivity, credentials, or external dependencies.
Usually Failed Jobs
- Description: Shows failed jobs in the selected period whose history indicates recurring failures.
- Panel type: table
Practical recommendation: Review the trend by job step and separate known failures from real degradations so important incidents do not become normalized.
Disk
This section details disk capacity to control fill-up risk and anticipate growth problems in data, logs, or general server storage.
SQL Server Disks
- Description: Table with total size, available size, and free percentage for each disk on the server associated with the instance.
- Panel type: table
Colors by value:
| Column | Value | Color | Units | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Percentage | Remaining values | % | Free space is critical. | |
| > 10 | % | Free space is low and should be watched. | ||
| > 20 | % | Free space is in the recommended range. |
Practical recommendation: Keeping every drive above 20% free helps avoid autogrowth incidents, log saturation, and lack of space for maintenance or backup tasks.
High Availability
This section allows reviewing overall Always On health, the current replica role, and per-database synchronization and latency status.
Overall Status
- Description: Indicates the overall health status of the availability groups for the selected instance.
- Panel type: stat
Practical recommendation: If the overall status is no longer healthy, immediately validate synchronization, replica connectivity, and recent events before making changes in the environment.
Group Roles
- Description: Shows the current server role inside the availability group, allowing confirmation of whether it is acting as the primary or secondary replica.
- Panel type: table
Practical recommendation: After planned or unplanned failover, verify here that the role distribution matches the expected design.
Replica Status
- Description: Provides per-database detail about synchronization state, synchronization health, and the latest replicated commit inside the availability group.
- Panel type: table
Colors by value:
| Column | Value | Color | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Synchronization State | SYNCHRONIZED | The replica is synchronized. | |
| A REVISAR | Synchronization requires review. | ||
| Synchronization Health | HEALTHY | Status is healthy. | |
| A REVISAR | There may be degradation or delay. |
Practical recommendation: If review states appear repeatedly, check replica connectivity, log send and receive health, and possible redo delay.
Latency Performance
- Description: Shows latency indicators per database inside the availability group, including latency, recovery time, and redo queue size.
- Panel type: table
Colors by value:
| Column | Value | Color | Units | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Redo Queue Size KB | Remaining values | KB | Redo queue is in the expected range. | |
| > 10000 | KB | Redo queue is elevated. |
Practical recommendation: If Redo Queue Size KB grows steadily, review secondary I/O, recent transaction volume, and blocking conditions that can delay redo.