Database Drift – Monitoring Unauthorized Object Changes

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This metric identifies when an object has been changed by other than the authorized login. It relies on an Extended Events session to capture the metrics and filters for a specific login. This is a tweak to this custom metric. Here is the necessary Extended Events Session (substitute the appropriate login for the ‘LoginName’ string. […] Read more

Databases at 80% of max file size

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This metric tracks the largest file in a database as a percentage of the maximum file size. If there are 3 files, and 2 are at 50% of the max set (max_usage in sys.database_files), and a third is at 60%, the 60% number is returned. Read more

Detect MrbMiner Malware

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This metric looks for the presence of the MrbMiner malware by checking for an account in sys.sql_logins. Additional information: https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-mrbminer-malware-has-infected-thousands-of-mssql-databases/ Read more

SQL Agent Jobs Owned By The Wrong Person

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One or more SQL Agent jobs exist that are not owned by the database owner. You should fix these jobs so that they’re owned by the appropriate person. If the owning account is removed from Active Directory, the job may fail. Read more

Monitor Database Events

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This metric queries data from an Extended Events session to detect databases being dropped, created, started, stopped, attached or detached. It assigns a configurable “anxiety index” value (an integer from 1-10) to each detected event and then calculates a total based on the occurrences of these events over a period. First, create and start for […] Read more

Monitor TempDB Contention

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Measures the total duration of latch waits on the tempdb database, in a one-minute time interval. First, create and start for the following Extended Events session on the monitored SQL Server instance: [crayon-6072bad2bc953080341397/] The goal is to get the total duration of latch waits, in the last minute, so this session collects all the event […] Read more

Monitoring Changes in Permissions, Users, Roles and Logins

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Reports the number of changes to logins, users, roles in the past 10 minutes. It measures every change but doesn’t tell you if this is a drift from what it should be, since it might only be a permission being temporarily created and then revoked. First, create the following function in the database on the […] Read more

What are custom metrics?

The SQL Monitor custom metric feature lets you run T-SQL queries against your SQL Servers to collect specific data. You can analyze and receive alerts about your custom data just like everything else SQL Monitor collects.

But what if you don’t want to write your own queries? No problem. Redgate has brought together a range of quality custom metrics for you to use in SQL Monitor, which are all are free, tried and tested. You can install straight away, and use the resources on this site to help you write your own.

See the Getting Started guides

What is SQL Monitor?

SQL Monitor is a SQL Server performance monitoring tool that gives you real-time and historical SQL Server performance data with alerts and diagnostics.

With its embedded expertise from SQL Server experts and MVPs, it gives you the information and advice you need to find and fix issues before users are even aware.

Find out more about SQL Monitor

Featured custom metrics

  • Total database file size

    by Hugo Kornelis | 3,837 views |

    This custom metric measures the total database file size (data files and log file combined). An increase in this metric signals that a database was grown. When not done by the DBA, this is an autogrow. Excessive autogrow events should be prevented as this can result to file fragmentation. Try to manually grow files before […] Read more

  • Number of active backups and restores

    by SQL Monitor Team | 3,135 views |

    This metric will display the total number of active backups and restores on a server. This can be used to correlate with other metrics to explain why disk IO and CPU usage could have changed. Read more

  • Full backup to odd path

    by Eelco Drost | 2,656 views |

    This custom metric queries the MSDB database to search for multiple paths for a full backup Read more

See all custom metrics