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Use the AlwaysOn Dashboard (SQL Server Management Studio)

  • Article

Database administrators use the AlwaysOn Dashboard to obtains an at-a-glance view the health of an AlwaysOn availability group and its availability replicas and databases in SQL Server 2014. Some of the typical uses for the AlwaysOn Dashboard are:

  • Choosing a replica for a manual failover.

  • Estimating data loss if you force failover.

  • Evaluating data-synchronization performance.

  • Evaluating the performance impact of a synchronous-commit secondary replica

The AlwaysOn Dashboard provides key availability group states and performance indicators allowing you to easily make high availability operational decisions using the following types of information.

  • Replica roll-up state

  • Synchronization mode and state

  • Estimate Data Loss

  • Estimated Recovery Time (redo catch up)

  • Database Replica details

  • Synchronization mode and state

  • Time to restore log

Before You Begin

Prerequisites

You must be connected to the instance of SQL Server (server instance) that hosts either the primary replica or a secondary replica of an availability group.

Security

Permissions

Requires CONNECT, VIEW SERVER STATE, and VIEW ANY DEFINITION permissions.

To start the AlwaysOn Dashboard

  1. In Object Explorer, connect to the instance of SQL Server on which you want to run the AlwaysOn Dashboard.

  2. Expand the AlwaysOn High Availability node, right-click the Availability Groups node, and then click Show Dashboard.

To Change AlwaysOn Dashboard Options

You can use the SQL Server Management StudioOptions dialog box to configure the SQL Server AlwaysOn Dashboard behavior for automatic refreshing and enabling an auto-defined AlwaysOn policy.

  1. From the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. To automatically refresh the dashboard, in the Options dialog box, select Turn on automatic refresh, enter the refresh interval in seconds, and then enter the number of times you want to retry the connection.

  3. To enable a user-defined policy, select Enable user-defined AlwaysOn policy.

Availability Group Summary

The availability group screen displays a summary line for each availability group for which the connected server instance hosts a replica. This pane displays the following columns.

Availability Group Name
The name of an availability group for which the connected server instance hosts a replica.

Primary Instance
Name of the server instance that is hosting the primary replica of the availability group.

Failover Mode
Displays the failover mode for which the replica is configured. The possible failover mode values are:

  • Automatic. Indicates that one or more replicas is in automatic-failover mode.

  • Manual. Indicates that no replica is automatic-failover mode.

Issues
Click the Issues link to open troubleshooting documentation for a given issue. For a list of all the AlwaysOn policy issues, see AlwaysOn Policies for Operational Issues with AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server).

Tip

Click the column headings to sort the availability group information by the name of the availability group, primary instance, failover mode, or Issue.

Availability Group Details

The following detail information is displayed for the availability group that you select from the summary screen:

Availability group state
Displays the state of health for the availability group.

Primary instance
Name of the server instance that is hosting the primary replica of the availability group.

Failover mode
Displays the failover mode for which the replica is configured. The possible failover mode values are:

  • Automatic. Indicates that one or more replicas is in automatic-failover mode.

  • Manual. Indicates that no replica is automatic-failover mode.

Cluster state
Name and state of the cluster where the instance of the connected server and the availability group is a member node.

Availability Replica Details

The Availability replica pane displays the following columns:

Name
The name of the server instance that hosts the availability replica. This column is shown by default.

Role
Indicates the current role of the availability replica, either Primary or Secondary. For information about Always On Availability Groups roles, see Overview of AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server). This column is shown by default.

Failover Mode
Displays the failover mode for which the replica is configured. The possible failover mode values are:

  • Automatic. Indicates that one or more replicas is in automatic-failover mode.

  • Manual. Indicates that no replica is automatic-failover mode.

Synchronization State
Indicates whether a secondary replica is currently synchronized with primary replica. This column is shown by default. The possible values are:

  • Not Synchronized. One or more databases in the replica are not synchronized or have not yet been joined to the availability group.

  • Synchronizing. One or more databases in the replica are being synchronized.

  • Synchronized. All databases in the secondary replica are synchronized with the corresponding primary databases on the current primary replica, if any, or on the last primary replica.

    Note

    In performance mode, the database is never in the synchronized state.

  • NULL. Unknown state. This value occurs when the local server instance cannot communicate with the WSFC failover cluster (that is the local node is not part of WSFC quorum).

Issues
Lists the issue name. This value is shown by default. For a list of all the AlwaysOn policy issues, see AlwaysOn Policies for Operational Issues with AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server).

Availability Mode
Indicates the replica property that you set separately for each availability replica. This value is hidden by default. The possible values are:

  • Asynchronous. The secondary replica never becomes synchronized with the primary replica.

  • Synchronous. When catching up to the primary database, a secondary database enters this state, and it remains caught up as long as data synchronization continues for the database.

Primary Connection Mode
Indicates the mode that is used to connect to the primary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Secondary Connection Mode
Indicates the mode that is used to connect to the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Connection State
Indicates whether a secondary replica is currently connected to the primary replica. This column is hidden by default. The possible values are:

  • Disconnected. For a remote availability replica, indicates that it is disconnected from the local availability replica. The response of the local replica to the Disconnected state depends on its role, as follows:

    • On the primary replica, if a secondary replica is disconnected, the secondary databases are marked as Not Synchronized on the primary replica, and the primary replica waits for the secondary to reconnect.

    • On the secondary replica, upon detecting that it is disconnected, the secondary replica attempts to reconnect to the primary replica.

  • Connected. A remote availability replica that is currently connected to the local replica.

Operational State
Indicates the current operational state of the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default. The possible values are:

0. Pending failover

1. Pending

2. Online

3. Offline

4. Failed

5. Failed, no quorum

NULL. Replica is not local

Last Connection Error No.
Number of the last connection error. This value is hidden by default.

Last Connection Error Description
Description of the last connection error. This value is hidden by default.

Last Connection Error Timestamp
Timestamp of the last connection error. This value is hidden by default.

Note

For information about performance counters for availability replicas, see SQL Server, Availability Replica.

To Group Availability Group Information

To group the information, click Group by, and select one of the following:

  • Availability replicas

  • Availability databases

  • Synchronization state

  • Failover readiness

  • Issues

The pane that displays the grouped information displays the following columns:

Name
The name of the availability database. This value is shown by default.

Replica
The name of the instance of SQL Server that hosts the availability replica. This value is shown by default.

Synchronization State
Indicates whether the availability database is currently synchronized with primary replica. This value is shown by default. The possible synchronization states are:

  • Not synchronizing.

    • For the primary role, indicates that the database is not ready to synchronize its transaction log with the corresponding secondary databases.

    • For a secondary database, indicates that the database has not started log synchronization because of a connection issue, is being suspended, or is going through transition states during startup or a role switch.

  • Synchronizing.

    On a primary replica:

    • For a primary database, indicates that this database is ready to accept a scan request from a secondary database.

    • On a secondary replica, indicates that there is active data movement going on for that secondary database.

    On a secondary replica, indicates that there is active data movement going on for that replica.

  • Synchronized.

    For a primary database, indicates that at least one secondary database is synchronized.

    For a secondary database, indicates that the database is synchronized with the corresponding primary database.

  • Reverting.

    Indicates the phase in the undo process when a secondary database is actively getting pages from the primary database.

    Caution

    When a database is in the REVERTING state, forcing failover to the secondary replica can leave that database in a state in which it cannot be started.

  • Initializing.

    Indicates the phase of undo when the transaction log required for a secondary database to catch up to the undo LSN is being shipped and hardened on a secondary replica.

    Caution

    When a database is in the INITIALIZING state, forcing failover to the secondary replica will always leave that database in a state in which it cannot be started.

Failover Readiness
Indicates which availability replica can be failed over with or without potential data loss. This column is shown by default. The possible values are:

  • Data Loss

  • No Data Loss

Issues
Lists the issue name. This column is shown by default. The possible values are:

  • Warnings. Click to display the thresholds and warnings issues.

  • Critical. Click to display the critical issues.

For a list of all the AlwaysOn policy issues, see AlwaysOn Policies for Operational Issues with AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server).

Suspended
Indicates whether the database is Suspended or has been Resumed. This value is hidden by default.

Suspend Reason
Indicates the reason for the suspended state. This value is hidden by default.

Estimate Data Loss (seconds)
Indicates the time difference of the last transaction log record in the primary replica and secondary replica. If the primary replica fails, all transaction log records within the time window will be lost. This value is hidden by default.

Estimated Recovery Time (seconds)
Indicates the time in seconds it takes to redo the catch-up time. The catch-up time is the time it will take for the secondary replica to catch up with the primary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Synchronization Performance (seconds)
Indicates the time in seconds it takes to synchronize between the primary and secondary replicas. This value is hidden by default.

Log Send Queue Size (KB)
Indicates the amount of log records in the log files of the primary database that have not been sent to the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Log Send Rate (KB/sec)
Indicates the rate in KB per second at which log records are being sent to the secondary replica This value is hidden by default.

Redo Queue Size (KB)
Indicates the amount of log records in the log files of the secondary replica that have not yet been redone. This value is hidden by default.

Redo Rate (KB/sec)
Indicates the rate in KB per second at which the log records are being redone. This value is hidden by default.

FileStream Send Rate (KB/sec)
Indicates the rate of the FileStream in KB per second at which transactions are being sent to the replica. This value is hidden by default.

End of Log LSN
Indicates the actual log sequence number (LSN) that corresponds to the last log record in the log cache on the primary and secondary replicas. This value is hidden by default.

Recovery LSN
Indicates the end of the transaction log before the replica writes any new log records after recovery or failover on the primary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Truncation LSN
Indicates the minimum log truncation value for the primary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Last Commit LSN
Indicates the actual LSN corresponding to the last commit record in the transaction log. This value is hidden by default.

Last Commit Time
Indicates the time corresponding to the last commit record. This value is hidden by default.

Last Sent LSN
Indicates the point up to which all log blocks have been sent by the primary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Last Sent Time
Indicates the time when the last log block was sent. This value is hidden by default.

Last Received LSN
Indicates the point up to which all log blocks have been received by the secondary replica that hosts the secondary database. This value is hidden by default.

Last Received Time
Indicates the time when the log block identifier in last message received was read on the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Last Hardened LSN
Indicates the point up to which all log records have been flushed to disk on the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Last Hardened Time
Indicates the time when the log-block identifier was received for the last hardened LSN on the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Last Redone LSN
Indicates the actual LSN of the log record that was redone last on the secondary replica. This value is hidden by default.

Last Redone Time
Indicates the time when the last log record was redone on the secondary database. This value is hidden by default.

Related Tasks

See Also

sys.dm_os_performance_counters (Transact-SQL)
Monitoring of Availability Groups (SQL Server)