Ad hoc query stubs in plan cache

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Rating: 4.0/5 (1 vote cast)
1 9,572 0 ,
This metric measures the total number of one-time use ad hoc queries in the plan cache that have been stored in the form of a stub, not as a full execution plan. Read more

Last backup size

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Rating: 4.0/5 (4 votes cast)
4 15,006 0
Backups are at the heart of the activities of any DBA. You have to restore the backup to know it is good, but you can get an early alert that something is wrong if your backup size changes rapidly or unexpectedly in a short period of time. Read more

Database file size

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Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)
0 11,025 0
It’s important to measure the growth of databases so you can plan future space requirements, prepare for time periods when heavy volume traffic is expected, and take action in advance to prevent problems such as highly fragmented databases. Read more

Schema modified

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Rating: 3.5/5 (2 votes cast)
2 11,252 0 ,
The metric is a necessary step in order to achieve the key purpose of this metric, which is to create an alert that will be raised when something is added to the schema, or the existing schema is modified. Read more

WriteLog wait time

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Rating: 5.0/5 (2 votes cast)
2 26,497 0 ,
During a transaction, data is written to the log cache so that it’s ready to be written to the log file on commit, or can be rolled back if necessary. When the log cache is being flushed to disk, the SQL Server session will wait on the WriteLog wait type. Read more

Buffer cache used per database in MB

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Rating: 4.9/5 (7 votes cast)
7 15,041 0 ,
Knowing how much of your RAM is committed to each database can help you provision the right amount of RAM to SQL Server. It also helps to identify rogue queries that draw too much data into RAM and force data from other databases out of the cache. Read more

Table size (MB)

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Rating: 4.1/5 (10 votes cast)
10 35,468 0
This metric is useful if you want to know exactly how much physical space a particular table is taking up, including the size of its indexes. Read more

Server principals with default database offline

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Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)
1 7,604 0
This metric monitors whether a server principal's default database is offline. When you create a SQL Server server principal (formerly referred to as a server login) it has a default database setting that is used to assist in a connection request when no database is specified. 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 | 5,361 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 | 4,178 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 | 3,799 views |

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

See all custom metrics