Overview - Instance

  • Published on Jan 14, 2026
  • 13 minute(s) read
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Instance Dashboard - Overview

The Instance Dashboard - Overview tab provides a comprehensive, multi-instance view of your SQL Server environment. This view aggregates metrics across your entire instance landscape or filtered subset, helping you identify trends, compare performance, understand costs, and quickly spot issues that need attention.

The Overview screen is organized into four main sections: Overview, Properties, Instance Health, and Volume Metric Statistics. Each section contains multiple cards displaying metrics and insights about your selected instances.

Filtering and Navigation

Filter Controls

The Overview tab offers several ways to focus on specific instances:

  • Views - Select from pre-configured views to quickly filter instances based on common criteria. Views may be created and managed in most screens in WISdom.
  • Tag - Filter instances by tags such as Tier of Service, Environment, or custom tags you've created. Tags may be managed in the Tags section.
  • Filters - Access the comprehensive filter panel for advanced filtering options. The Filters panel uses expandable sections to organize available filter criteria, making it easy to drill into specific attributes without cluttering the interface.
    • Instances - Lists all instances available on this page
    • Editions - Provides a list of 7 known editions of SQL Server
  • Reset - Clear all active filters to return to the unfiltered view

Filters you apply in the Overview tab will persist when you navigate to the Details tab, maintaining your context. However, the Details tab requires a single instance to be selected - if you have multiple instances filtered in Overview, you'll need to narrow your selection to view Details.

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

Understanding the Dashboard Data

This dashboard displays data across different timeframes:

  • Configuration information (such as SQL Server version, edition, and configuration settings) 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.

Overview Section

The Overview section provides high-level financial and resource information about your instance environment.

Cost of Data

Displays the total cost of your SQL Server instances based on resource consumption and workload patterns. This FinOps metric helps you understand the financial impact of your database infrastructure.

Metrics Shown:

  • Monthly Cost - Total monthly cost for all filtered instances based on current 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

How to Use:

  • Monitor cost trends to identify spending increases
  • Compare costs across different environments or tiers to optimize resource allocation
  • Use growth percentages to forecast future spending and budget requirements
  • Click the card to see a breakdown of costs by instance

What It Tells You:
The Cost of Data metric provides visibility into database infrastructure spending, helping you make informed decisions about resource allocation, consolidation opportunities, and capacity planning. Increasing costs may indicate growing workloads that require attention, while high costs relative to utilization may suggest opportunities for optimization.

For managed services customers, these metrics help track billable services and ensure spending aligns with business value.

Instance Resources

Displays aggregate resource totals across all instances in your filtered view.

Metrics Shown:

  • Instances - Total count of SQL Server instances in the filtered view
  • CPU - Total logical processors allocated across all instances
  • Databases - Total count of user databases across all instances (system databases excluded)
  • Space Used - Total storage consumed by databases across all instances (TB)
  • Memory - Total memory allocated to SQL Server instances (TB)

Use this card to understand the total SQL Server footprint for your environment or filtered subset. These totals help with license planning, capacity forecasting, and resource allocation decisions.

Database Space Allocation

Shows how database storage is allocated and utilized across your filtered instances.

Understanding the Display:

  • The center gauge value shows total data space reserved across all filtered instances (in TB)
  • 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
  • Disk Space percentages show how much of reserved space is actually consumed

How to Use:

  • Monitor the used percentage to identify over-provisioned storage
  • Click "Data Space Reserved" or "Disk Space" to see a pop-up listing space allocation by instance
  • Look for instances with high reserved but low used percentages as consolidation candidates

What It Tells You:
This visualization helps you understand storage efficiency across your environment. Large gaps between reserved and used space may indicate:

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

Database Space Utilization Over Time

Displays historical trends in database storage consumption across your filtered instances.

Understanding the Chart:

  • Line chart shows database space growth over time
  • Data displays up to 1 year from the current date (or from the collection start date if monitoring began recently)
  • The date picker does not affect this chart - it always shows historical trends from today backward

How to Use:

  • Click View Data to open a detailed view with additional analysis options
  • Identify seasonal patterns or unexpected growth spikes
  • Forecast future storage requirements based on historical trends
  • Compare growth rates across different time periods

What It Tells You:
Historical space trends help you:

  • Plan capacity expansions before running out of storage
  • Identify unusual growth patterns that may indicate data quality issues
  • Understand normal growth rates for budgeting and planning
  • Validate the effectiveness of archival and cleanup processes

Properties Section

The Properties section summarizes instance characteristics and configuration details across your monitored environment.

Instances by Platform

Shows the distribution of instances across SQL Server versions and builds. This helps you track platform diversity and identify upgrade opportunities.

How to Use:

  • The color-coded donut chart shows the breakdown by SQL Server version
  • Each row displays the platform name (e.g., "SQL Server 2019 (RTM-CU11)") and instance count
  • Click any row to see a pop-up listing specific instances running that version

Common Platform Versions:
Versions may include SQL Server 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2022, along with their specific builds and cumulative updates.

Why This Matters:
Understanding your platform distribution helps with:

  • Security and patch management - older versions may have unpatched vulnerabilities
  • Support lifecycle planning - Microsoft's support policies vary by version
  • Feature planning - newer versions offer performance and functionality improvements
  • Standardization initiatives - reducing platform diversity simplifies management

Instances by Edition

Displays the distribution of instances by SQL Server edition. Edition determines licensing costs and available features.

Editions Shown (not all editions are listed below):

  • Enterprise - Full feature set with advanced capabilities; highest licensing cost
  • Standard - Core database features suitable for most workloads; moderate licensing cost
  • Developer - Full Enterprise features for non-production use; free for development
  • Express - Limited free edition suitable for small workloads
  • Azure SQL Database - A fully managed, cloud-based relational database service in Microsoft Azure
  • Azure SQL Managed Instance - A fully managed database service in Microsoft Azure

How to Use:

  • The color-coded donut chart shows the proportion of instances by edition
  • Colors in the chart match the numbers in the Instances column
  • Click any row to see a pop-up listing instances with that edition

Why This Matters:
Edition distribution directly impacts licensing costs and feature availability. Use this information to:

  • Identify opportunities to downgrade over-featured instances to reduce licensing costs
  • Ensure critical workloads have appropriate edition features
  • Plan license allocations for new instances
  • Validate license compliance across your environment

Instances by Environment

Shows the distribution of instances across environment types. Environments typically represent the purpose or lifecycle stage of each instance.

Common Environments:

  • Production - Live production systems serving end users
  • Development - Development and engineering systems
  • Disaster Recovery (DR) - Standby systems for business continuity
  • Quality Assurance (QA) - Testing and quality validation systems
  • Staging - Pre-production validation environment
  • Test - General testing systems
  • User Acceptance Test (UAT) - End-user validation environment
  • Unassigned - Instances without environment classification

How to Use:

  • The color-coded donut chart shows the proportion of instances in each environment
  • Colors in the chart match the numbers in the Instances column
  • Click any row to see a pop-up listing instances in that environment

Environment classifications are assigned using Environment tags in the Tags section. Proper environment tagging helps separate production from non-production systems and enables environment-specific monitoring and reporting.

Instance Health Section

The Instance Health section displays operational status, availability, and monitoring configuration across your instances.

Alert Status

Shows the current count of open alerts by severity level across your filtered instances.

Alert Severity Levels:

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

Alerts are generated based on monitoring checks and thresholds you've configured. The counts shown reflect all open alerts for your filtered instance set.

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

Instance Availability

Displays the availability and accessibility of instances grouped by Tier of Service. Availability represents the percentage of time during the selected period that each instance was online, fully functional, and responsive.

How to Use:

  • Review the Tier of Service column to see how instances are grouped by criticality
  • Check the Availability % column to identify instances with poor uptime
  • Sort by clicking column headers to organize data by tier or availability percentage
  • Click any row to see a detailed pop-up listing individual instances with their Availability % and Uptime

What It Tells You:
Instance Availability indicates whether your SQL Server environment is meeting service level expectations. Low availability percentages suggest instances are experiencing outages, significant performance issues, or connectivity problems. Pay particular attention to Tier 1 (mission-critical) instances with availability below your target threshold.

How Availability is Calculated:
Availability is measured by WISdom's ability to connect to the SQL Server instance for scheduled data collection. An instance is considered available when:

  • The SQL Server service is running
  • Network connectivity allows collector access
  • The instance responds to connection requests
  • Data collection queries execute successfully

Silencing Window

Displays instances that have active or upcoming silencing windows. During a silencing window, alerts for the instance are suppressed, which is useful during planned maintenance, deployments, or other expected disruption periods.

Columns:

  • Instance - Name of the instance with a silencing window
  • Silencing Window - Date and time range when alerts will be suppressed

Click column headers to sort by instance name or window timing. Use this card to verify that silencing windows are configured correctly and to identify instances currently in maintenance mode.

The [+ Windows] button will take an Admin or Power User to the Silencing Window screen in the Admin Console; however, Regular User accounts will not have access to the Admin Console.

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

Tier of Service

Shows the distribution of instances across Tier of Service classifications. Tiers typically represent the criticality of instances to your business operations.

How It Works:

  • The color-coded horizontal bar chart shows the relative distribution of instances across tiers
  • Each row displays the tier name and the count of instances in that tier
  • Colors in the chart correspond to the colored numbers in the Instances column
  • Click any row to see a pop-up listing all instances assigned to that tier

Common Tier Definitions:

  • Tier 1 - Mission-critical systems requiring the highest availability and fastest response
  • Non-Production - Development, test, and QA environments
  • Unassigned - Instances that haven't been categorized yet

Tiers are assigned using Tier of Service tags. If you need to update an instance's tier assignment, modify its tags in the Tags section. Proper tier classification helps prioritize monitoring efforts and ensures critical systems receive appropriate attention.

Monitoring

Displays the distribution of instances by their monitoring Profile. Monitoring levels determine how WISdom tracks and reports on each instance.

Common Monitoring Levels:

  • Collection Only - Data is collected, but no alerts are generated
  • Mission Critical - Tier 1 - Full monitoring with alerts for Tier 1 instances
  • Not Monitored - Instance is registered but not actively monitored

For managed services customers, additional monitoring levels may include:

  • 24/7 Monitoring - Around-the-clock monitoring and response
  • Core Business Hours - Monitoring during standard business hours

Click any row to see a pop-up listing instances configured with that monitoring level. The color-coded chart helps you quickly understand your monitoring coverage and identify instances that may need configuration updates.

Volume Metric Statistics Section

The Volume Metric Statistics section provides detailed performance, sizing, and cost metrics for your instances for the 30 days before the current date. This section is not impacted by the date picker selection.

Instances by Performance

Displays key performance metrics for each instance, helping you identify high-activity instances and performance patterns.

Columns:

  • Instance - Instance name (click for filter options)
  • Cost/Transaction - The cost per transaction, calculated by dividing monthly cost by transaction volume
  • Transactions/Second - Average transaction throughput, indicating write activity levels
  • Batch Requests/Second - Average batch requests, indicating overall query workload
  • CPU - Average CPU utilization percentage

How to Use:

  • Sort by any column to identify the highest-cost, highest-activity, or highest-CPU instances
  • Click the three-dot icon to export data to Excel or view in a separate window
  • Click instance names to adjust filters or navigate to Details view

What It Tells You:

  • Cost/Transaction helps identify inefficient instances where optimization could reduce costs
  • High Transactions/Second indicates write-intensive workloads that may benefit from I/O optimization
  • High Batch Requests/Second suggests high query activity that may need query optimization
  • High CPU percentages indicate instances approaching capacity limits

Instances by Size

Shows storage allocation, growth rates, and costs for each instance. These are point-in-time metrics.

Columns:

  • Instance - Instance name (click for filter options)
  • Cost - Monthly cost for the instance
  • Data Size - Total allocated space for data and transaction log files (GB)
  • Growth % - Percentage growth over the measurement period
  • Growth Size - Absolute storage growth (GB)

How to Use:

  • Sort by Growth % to identify rapidly expanding instances
  • Review high-cost instances relative to data size to identify optimization opportunities
  • Click the three-dot icon to export data to Excel or view in a separate window

What It Tells You:
High growth rates may indicate:

  • Normal business expansion
  • Data quality issues are causing unnecessary storage consumption
  • Missing archival processes
  • Inefficient indexing strategies that are creating redundant data

Combine cost and size metrics to understand your cost per GB and identify outliers that may benefit from optimization.

Instance List

The Instance List provides a detailed table view of all instances matching your current filter, with sortable columns for easy analysis.

Available Columns:

  • Host Health - Current health status indicator (green, yellow, red) for the underlying host
  • Silencing - Shows if a silencing window is active or scheduled
  • Instance - Instance name (click for options to include or exclude the instance in the filter or to copy the instance name)
  • Port - TCP port number the instance listens on
  • Host - Name of the host server where the instance runs
  • Tier of Service - Service tier classification
  • Platform - SQL Server version and build
  • Monitoring - Monitoring level configured for the instance

How to Use:

  • Click any column header to sort by that column (ascending or descending)
  • Click an instance name for options to include or exclude the instance in the filter, or copy the instance name
  • Use the table to quickly identify instances meeting specific criteria

The Instance List is particularly useful when you need to:

  • Generate a list of instances for reporting or planning purposes
  • Identify all instances in a specific environment or tier
  • Find instances with specific health or configuration characteristics
  • Export instance information for external analysis

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