Details - Instance

  • Updated on Jan 14, 2026
  • Published on Jan 14, 2026
  • 12 minute(s) read
Prev Next

Instance Dashboard - Details

The Instance Dashboard - Details tab provides an in-depth view of a single SQL Server instance, displaying detailed configuration information, performance metrics, cost analysis, and query statistics. Use this view when you need to investigate a specific instance's setup, troubleshoot issues, analyze costs, or review detailed specifications and performance characteristics.

Understanding the Dashboard Data

This dashboard displays data across different timeframes:

  • Configuration information (such as SQL Server version, edition, configuration settings, and installed components) reflects the most recent snapshot within your selected date range. WISdom collects configuration data daily, so you'll see the instance's setup as of the last successful collection.
  • Performance metrics display data from either the last 30 days or the last 1 year from today's date, regardless of your date picker selection. Each metric's timeframe is indicated in its chart title.

The Details screen is organized into three main sections: Overview, Properties, and Overview (formerly Volume Metric Statistics). Each section contains cards with metrics and configuration details for the selected instance.

Selecting an Instance

The Details tab requires you to select exactly one instance before displaying data. You have several options for instance selection:

Using Filters:

  1. Click the Filters button to open the filter panel
  2. Navigate to the Instance filter section
  3. Select a single instance from the available options
  4. The Details tab will display data for your selected instance

Using a View:
If you have a saved View that includes only one instance, selecting that View will automatically display Details for that instance. Views with multiple instances require you to narrow your selection to view Details.

From the Overview Tab:
Click any instance name in the Overview tab's Instance List to add the instance as a filter, then navigate to that instance's Details view.

Filter Persistence:
Filters you apply persist as you navigate between the Overview and Details tabs, and other screens in WISdom. However, if multiple instances have been selected, you'll need to narrow your selection to a single instance when switching to Details. The filter will automatically prompt you to refine your selection if needed.

Date Selection

The Date Picker in the upper right corner allows you to select any date up to today. The data displayed will vary; some of it is annualized, some monthly, and some based on the selected date.

  • Annualized data will be labeled and display data based on up to a year from the current date (or the collection start date)
  • Monthly data will be the previous 30 days from today's date
  • Configuration data will display based on the last collection date selected in the Date Picker

Overview Section (Top)

The Overview section provides critical resource allocation, cost analysis, and operational status information for the selected instance.

Instance Resources

Displays key resource metrics and configuration details for the selected instance.

Metrics Shown:

  • Engine Processors - Number of logical processors allocated to the SQL Server engine
  • Databases - Count of user databases on the instance (system databases excluded)
  • Monthly Cost - Current monthly cost for this instance based on resource consumption
  • Space Used - Total storage consumed by databases on this instance (GB)
  • Last Backup Default - Date and time of the most recent backup of the default database
  • Memory - Total memory allocated to SQL Server (GB)

How to Use:
This card provides a quick snapshot of the instance's footprint and configuration. Use these metrics to:

  • Understand resource allocation for capacity planning
  • Track costs at the instance level
  • Monitor storage consumption trends
  • Verify backup currency
  • Assess memory configuration

Cost of Data

Displays detailed cost analysis for the selected instance, helping you understand the financial impact of this specific database workload.

Metrics Shown:

  • Monthly Cost - Current monthly cost for this instance based on resource allocation and usage patterns
  • Annual Cost - Projected annual cost based on current monthly spending
  • Monthly Growth - Percentage change in monthly costs compared to the previous period

What It Tells You:
The Cost of Data metric helps you:

  • Track spending trends for individual instances
  • Identify cost increases that may require investigation
  • Plan budgets based on historical cost patterns
  • Compare costs before and after optimization efforts
  • Justify resource allocation decisions with financial data

Understanding Cost Calculations:
Costs are calculated based on:

  • CPU core allocation and utilization
  • Memory allocation
  • Storage consumption
  • Transaction volume and workload intensity

For managed services customers, these metrics help track billable services at the instance level.

Database Space Allocation

Shows how database storage is allocated and utilized for the selected instance.

Understanding the Display:

  • The center gauge value shows total data space reserved for this instance (in MB, GB, TB, or PB)
  • The outer ring represents total allocated data space, with coloring showing the percentage of used space
  • The inner ring represents transaction log space allocation and usage
  • Total Data Space Reserved shows reserved capacity for data files
  • Disk Space shows actual space consumed on disk

Space Metrics:

  • Percentages indicate how much of the reserved space is actually being used
  • Free space percentages help identify over-provisioned allocations

How to Use:

  • Monitor the used percentage to identify opportunities to reclaim unused space
  • Click "Data Space Reserved" or "Disk Space" to see a breakdown by database
  • Look for large gaps between reserved and used space as optimization candidates

What It Tells You:
This visualization reveals storage efficiency for the instance. Large gaps between reserved and used space may indicate:

  • Over-provisioned database auto-growth settings
  • Deleted data that hasn't been reclaimed through maintenance
  • Opportunities to shrink databases or adjust growth parameters

Alert Status

Shows the total number of open alerts for this instance, broken down by severity level.

Alert Severity Levels:

  • Critical - Immediate attention required; indicates serious issues impacting availability or performance
  • Warning - Issues that may escalate if not addressed; requires monitoring and planning
  • Information - Informational notifications; typically used for awareness rather than action

What This Tells You:
The alert status summary helps you understand:

  • Whether the instance has ongoing issues (critical or warning alerts)
  • The severity and urgency of problems affecting the instance
  • Historical alert patterns that may indicate systemic issues

A high number of open alerts, particularly critical alerts, indicates the instance needs immediate attention. Frequent alerts may suggest underlying stability or configuration issues worth investigating.

For detailed information about configuring and managing alerts, see the Alerts section in the Monitoring Modules documentation.

Silencing Window

Displays information about active or scheduled silencing windows for this instance. During a silencing window, alerts are suppressed, which is useful during planned maintenance or deployments.

Information Shown:

  • Silencing Window - Date and time range when alerts will be suppressed
  • Status - Whether the window is currently active or scheduled

If no silencing window is configured, the card displays "No pending silencing windows" along with information about when alerts are actively being monitored during maintenance or deployments to reduce noise.

For information about creating and managing silencing windows, see Silencing Windows in the Monitoring Modules documentation.

Properties Section

The Properties section displays detailed configuration information about the selected instance, including version details, configuration settings, and installed components.

Instance Properties

Shows core configuration properties and settings for the selected SQL Server instance.

Properties Displayed:

  • Product Version - Full SQL Server version string including build number (e.g., "Microsoft SQL Server 2019 (RTM-CU11)")
  • Edition - SQL Server edition (Enterprise, Standard, Developer, Express)
  • Patch Level - Cumulative Update or Service Pack level (e.g., "RTM-CU11")
  • Port Number - TCP port the instance listens on (default is 1433)
  • Lock Pages in Memory - Whether this privilege is enabled (important for memory management)
  • Volume Maintenance Tasks - Whether instant file initialization is enabled (impacts database growth performance)

Understanding Key Properties:

Product Version:
The complete version string tells you the exact SQL Server build. Use this to:

  • Verify patch compliance
  • Check for known bugs fixed in later builds
  • Plan upgrade paths

Edition:
Determines available features and licensing costs:

  • Enterprise - Full feature set including advanced HA, security, and performance features
  • Standard - Core features suitable for most workloads
  • Developer - Enterprise features for non-production use (free)
  • Express - Limited free edition for small workloads

Patch Level:
Shows the Cumulative Update (CU) or Service Pack (SP) installed. Staying current with patches is critical for security and stability.

Lock Pages in Memory:
When enabled, it prevents Windows from paging SQL Server memory to disk, which is crucial for performance. This should typically be enabled for production instances.

Volume Maintenance Tasks (Instant File Initialization):
When enabled, SQL Server can grow data files instantly without zeroing out the new space. This significantly improves database growth and restore performance.

Instance Configurations

Displays important SQL Server configuration settings from sys.configurations.

Columns:

  • Property - Configuration setting name
  • Default Value - SQL Server's default value for this setting
  • Running Value - Currently configured value (may differ from default)

Common Configuration Settings Shown:

  • Ad Hoc Distributed Queries - Whether ad-hoc OPENROWSET/OPENDATASOURCE queries are allowed
  • Agent XPs - Whether SQL Server Agent extended stored procedures are enabled
  • Backup checksum default - Whether checksums are calculated during backups by default
  • Backup compression default - Whether backup compression is enabled by default
  • clr enabled - Whether CLR integration is enabled
  • contained database authentication - Whether contained database authentication is allowed
  • cost threshold for parallelism - CPU cost threshold for generating parallel execution plans

How to Use:

  • Compare running values against defaults to identify custom configurations
  • Verify that critical settings (like backup compression) are configured appropriately
  • Sort by clicking column headers
  • Use this information when troubleshooting performance or functionality issues

Why These Settings Matter:
Configuration settings directly impact:

  • Performance - Settings like cost threshold for parallelism affect query execution
  • Security - Settings like ad-hoc distributed queries affect the attack surface
  • Backup efficiency - Compression and checksum settings affect backup size and reliability
  • Feature availability - Settings like clr enabled control whether specific features can be used

Installed Components

Shows SQL Server components and features installed on this instance.

Information Displayed:

  • Component - Name of the installed component (e.g., "Trace Flags", "Index Pages")
  • Count - Number of items (e.g., number of trace flags enabled)

Common Components:

  • Trace Flags - Server-level trace flags that modify SQL Server behavior
  • Index Pages - Count of index pages in databases

Understanding Trace Flags:
Trace flags are switches that enable or disable specific SQL Server behaviors. They're typically used to:

  • Work around bugs until patches are available
  • Enable beta features
  • Modify optimizer behavior
  • Change default settings for specific scenarios

To see which specific trace flags are enabled and their purposes, you would typically need to query the instance directly or review the detailed component listing.

Overview Section (Bottom)

The bottom Overview section displays detailed performance statistics and query metrics for the selected instance.

Top Statements

Displays the most resource-intensive SQL statements executed in the past 30 days on this instance, helping you identify optimization opportunities.

Columns:

  • IO - Percentage of instance I/O activity generated by the query
  • CPU - Total CPU time consumed by this query pattern (percentage or milliseconds)
  • Duration - Average execution duration
  • Executions - Number of times this query pattern has executed
  • Database - Database where the statement executes
  • Object - Database object (table, stored procedure) involved
  • SQL Statement - Partial text of the SQL statement

How to Use:

  • Sort by IO, CPU, Duration, or Executions to identify different optimization targets
  • Click any SQL Statement to view the full query text in a flyout panel
  • Use the clipboard icon in the flyout to copy the complete statement for analysis
  • Click the three-dot icon to export data to Excel or view in a separate window
  • Use "Rows per page" to adjust how many statements are displayed

What to Look For:

  • High IO queries - Queries performing excessive reads/writes; primary candidates for index tuning or query rewriting to reduce data access
  • High CPU queries - Candidates for query optimization or index tuning
  • Long duration queries - May need performance tuning or indicate blocking issues
  • High execution count - Frequently run queries where small improvements yield big gains
  • Missing indexes - Statements performing table scans on large tables

Optimization Strategies:

  • Reduce I/O operations through proper indexing to minimize data pages read
  • Rewrite queries to eliminate inefficient patterns
  • Update statistics to improve execution plans
  • Add covering indexes to avoid key lookups

Instance Resource Statistics

Displays resource consumption patterns across databases on this instance for the past 30 days from the current date.

Columns:

  • Database - Database name
  • Database Size - Total allocated space for the database (GB)
  • Memory Usage - Amount of buffer pool memory consumed by this database
  • IO % - Percentage of instance I/O activity generated by this database
  • CPU % - Percentage of instance CPU consumed by this database
  • Memory % - Percentage of instance memory used by this database

How to Use:

  • Identify databases consuming disproportionate resources
  • Sort by any column to find resource-intensive databases
  • Compare resource usage against database size to identify inefficient databases
  • Use "Rows per page" to adjust the number of displayed databases
  • Click the three-dot icon to export data to Excel or view in a separate window

What It Tells You:

  • Small databases with high resource usage may have inefficient queries or missing indexes
  • Large databases with low resource usage may be good candidates for archival
  • Uneven resource distribution may indicate workload consolidation opportunities
  • High memory usage databases may benefit from memory-optimized features

Batch Response Statistics

Shows the distribution of batch requests by response time for the past 30 days from the current date, helping you understand query performance characteristics.

Time Buckets:

  • 0-10ms - Very fast queries; typically index seeks or simple lookups
  • 10-100ms - Fast queries; acceptable for most OLTP operations
  • 100-500ms - Moderate response time; may need optimization for user-facing queries
  • 500ms-1sec - Slow queries; typically require optimization
  • 1-5sec - Very slow queries; significant optimization needed
  • 5-50sec - Extremely slow queries; major performance issues
  • 50-100sec - Critical performance issues
  • More than 100sec - Unacceptable performance; requires immediate attention

Columns:

  • Requests % - Percentage of total requests falling in this time bucket
  • CPU Time: Requests - CPU cycles consumed by requests in this bucket
  • CPU Total % - Percentage of total CPU consumed by this bucket
  • CPU Time: Total (ms) - Total CPU time in milliseconds

How to Use:

  • Focus optimization efforts on buckets with high request percentages and long response times
  • Monitor the distribution over time to track the impact of optimizations
  • Compare CPU time against request count to identify CPU-intensive query patterns
  • Color-coded highlighting shows which buckets consume the most resources

What Good Performance Looks Like:

  • Majority of requests in the 0-10ms and 10-100ms buckets
  • Very few requests are taking more than 1 second
  • CPU consumption concentrated in faster buckets

What Poor Performance Looks Like:

  • A significant percentage of requests in buckets above 500ms
  • High CPU consumption in slower buckets
  • Growing percentage of slow requests over time

Use this data to prioritize query optimization efforts and track performance improvements.

Related Documentation