Planners

Planners

Optimize query performance with our powerful financial and technical planners.

The Planners module provides specialized calculators that help you document optimization wins, forecast the financial impact of infrastructure changes, and make data-driven decisions about cloud migration strategies. Each planner uses your WISdom monitoring data to generate cost projections and ROI analysis based on the specific inputs you provide.

Accessing Planners

Navigate to Planners from the left-hand navigation menu. The Planners overview screen displays three specialized planning tools, each represented by a clickable icon:

• Query Optimization ROI Planner
• Schema Change Cost Planner
• Coming Soon - Cloud Migration Planner - Currently Available as the Migrate function in the Environment - Hosts or Instances sections

Click any planner icon to open that planning tool. The planner will open in the same window, replacing the overview screen with the selected planner's input interface.

Available Planners

Query Optimization ROI Planner

Document and showcase the financial wins from completed query optimizations with before and after performance comparisons.

Use this planner to calculate the return on investment for query tuning efforts by comparing performance metrics before and after optimization. The planner generates cost projections based on resource consumption changes, helping you demonstrate the business value of database optimization work.

Typical Use Cases:

• Demonstrate cost savings from query tuning initiatives
• Build business cases for additional optimization resources
• Track and report on optimization project success

Schema Change Cost Planner

Calculate the financial impact of database schema changes with WISdom data.

This planner helps you forecast the costs associated with proposed schema modifications by analyzing current workload patterns and resource utilization. Project the financial implications before implementing significant database structure changes.

Typical Use Cases:

• Evaluate the cost impact of adding or removing indexes
• Forecast resource requirements for table restructuring
• Plan for capacity needs during schema migrations

Cloud Migration Planner

Provides recommendations for migrating hosts to AWS or Azure cloud providers to optimize cost, performance, and reliability.

The Cloud Migration Planner analyzes your SQL Server instances and provides specific cloud instance type recommendations based on actual resource consumption, throughput patterns, and performance data collected by WISdom. Select your target cloud provider (AWS or Azure) during initial setup, and the planner maps your current workloads to equivalent cloud service tiers with estimated costs based on the cloud provider's suggested retail pricing.

You can analyze multiple SQL Server instances in a single planning session. The planner displays individual recommendations for each instance, including 30-day resource utilization trends that help you identify potential consolidation opportunities where multiple instances could be combined into a single optimized cloud instance.

Typical Use Cases:

• Evaluate migration from on-premises to cloud infrastructure
• Compare costs between AWS and Azure by running separate analyses for each cloud provider
• Right-size cloud resources based on actual workload patterns and throughput data
• Identify consolidation opportunities by reviewing resource utilization across multiple instances
• Receive specific cloud instance type recommendations (e.g., AWS db.r5.xlarge or Azure Standard_E4s_v3) matched to your workload requirements

Using Planners Effectively

Each planner requires you to input specific data before estimated costs and projections are displayed. The accuracy and reliability of cost estimates depend on the quality and duration of monitoring data available in WISdom.

General Workflow

1. Select a Planner: Click the appropriate planner icon on the overview screen
2. Provide Input Data: Enter the required information specific to that planner's calculation method
3. Review Projections: Estimated costs and ROI metrics are displayed based on your inputs
4. Export or Share: Use the results to support business cases and decision-making

Navigation breadcrumbs display your current location (e.g., Planners > Overview > Query Optimization ROI Planner), making it easy to return to the overview screen or navigate to other areas of WISdom.