Global Marketing

10 SQL Server Metrics

to Monitor


Rudy Panigas
SQL Server Professional


SQL Server DBA Professionals
SQLDBApros
Adapted from the
original blog post by
Rudy Panigas.
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SQLDBApros
At some point, someone will ask you for metrics about your SQL
Servers. When that time comes, you should be prepared with some of
the following metrics:

How many SQL Servers are installed?
How many SQL Servers are used as production?
How many SQL Servers are used as development?
How many SQL Servers are used as quality assurance (QA) and user
acceptance testing (UAT)?
How many SQL Servers are used as disaster recovery?
How many SQL Servers are at your location, cloud, other sites, etc.?
What applications are using each SQL Server(s)?
How many databases do you have?
How big are the databases and total size of disk use?
What were the installation dates of the SQL Servers?
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10 key metrics
SQLDBApros
Why do you want to track the installation date?

If you already collect the above information and the date the SQL
Server was installed, you can:

Show more information about your SQL environment
Leverage it to show trends
Present it to management as an argument for hiring more resources
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Installation date
SQLDBApros
Here is the SQL script that will show the SQL Server name, version of
SQL Server, and the date of installation of your SQL Server:







You may also want to use one of the SERVERPROPERTY values.
SERVERPROPERTY also has a parameter that will allow you to return
the edition, which may be useful for reporting on, especially if there is
to be a consolidation project.

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T-SQL script
SQLDBApros
Here is a sample result:







Execute this script on all your SQL Server and record this information.

You can record the results into a spreadsheet or a table.

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Sample result
SQLDBApros
Once you have recorded this information on all of your SQL Server
installations, you can then use Excel Pivots or SQL Server Reporting
Services (SSRS) to create all types of interesting information:

With just a SUM of the column, you get a total SQL Server count.

If you had previous years totals, you can show how many SQL
Servers were added this and each preceding year.

If you sort the data by year and month, you can show:
How many SQL Server instances were installed
When they were installed
The busiest time for installation
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What to do with the data
SQLDBApros
If you include SQL Server versioning, you can then break down the
report based on versions with totals and when they were installed.
With this data you can also see which SQL Servers need to be upgraded
and show corresponding names and departments if you have collected
this information.
Sorting the data by types (production, development, UAT, etc.) you
can show how many of each type you have.
If you collected department data you can also show how many SQL
Servers each one has.
With Excel Pivots tables you can produce a graph showing current
growth rate and trend future growth.

There is a lot of information you can pass on to management that will
show interesting trends. This type of reporting helps management to
better understand your SQL Server environment.

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What to do with the data
SQLDBApros
This graph shows the total number of SQL Server installations from
2006 to 2013 (blue) and the trend of SQL Server growth (black).










According to this graph, the number of installed SQL Servers will be
almost doubled by 2020.
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Graphical representation of results
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Growth of SQL Server Environment
SQLDBApros
This graph shows SQL Server versions and the years they were
installed.









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Graphical representation of results
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
SQL2005
SQL2008
SQL2012
SQL2014
SQLDBApros
This graph shows how many SQL Servers were installed by department
and the breakdown of how they are used.









We see that both the Finance and Marketing departments have more
development SQL Servers than production and that Finance has the
least SQL Servers at the disaster recover (DR) site.
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Graphical representation of results
SQLDBApros
These examples how you can use the collected information to help
you in many ways.

Initially, the collection may be painful, however, you can design more
automated ways of attaining the information.

Once maintained, you will quickly see the importance.
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Importance of data collection
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