Get notified or kick off an automated workflow when your Azure SQL Database resources need attention. Start from a built-in template in a few clicks, with no identities or pipelines to set up.
We're excited to announce the public preview of alerts for Azure SQL Database in Database Hub, powered by Fabric Activator.
Last month, we brought performance monitoring for Azure SQL to Database Hub. That gave you one place to see how your databases are performing. Alerts are the next step. Instead of waiting for someone to spot a problem on a dashboard, Database Hub now watches your telemetry and tells you when a database needs attention.
With alerts in Database Hub, you can:
- Create an alert on a database in a few clicks, starting from a built-in template
- Turn a chart on the Performance page into an alert that covers many databases at once
- Take action when an alert fires, from a Teams message to a Power Automate flow
Why we built this
When we talk with customers about database monitoring, the first question after "Can I see it?" is almost always "Can it alert me when something's wrong?"
Setting up performance alerts for SQL at scale usually meant:
- Deploying a monitoring resource to collect telemetry
- Running a data store to hold it
- Setting up identities and permissions so the alerting service could read it
- Writing and maintaining alert queries for every new database
We wanted alerting to work the way performance monitoring does in Database Hub. Turn it on, and it just works.
Rather than build a new alerting engine, we built on Fabric Activator. Activator is the no-code detection and alerting engine that Fabric customers already use to keep an eye on their Fabric workloads. Today, teams use it to:
- Get alerted when a pipeline fails or a semantic model refresh doesn't finish
- Watch live data in eventstreams and Real-Time Dashboards
- Respond automatically, from a Teams message to a notebook or a Power Automate flow
Now we've brought those same capabilities to the SQL resources in Database Hub. Database Hub brings the database context and the telemetry. Activator brings the rules engine and the actions. You don't have to learn a new alerting tool. Your database alerts live right alongside the rest of your Fabric alerts.
Two ways to create an alert
1. Start from a template
This is the fastest way to get started.
- Go to the Estate page in Database Hub.
- Hover over an Azure SQL database and open the quick actions menu.
- Select Set alert from template.
- Pick a template.
Each template covers a common performance problem and comes with a default condition you can tune. For the current list of templates, see Alert templates.
The query and the database are already filled in for you. All you need to decide is:
- How often to check. You can go as often as every minute.
- The condition thresholds for when to alert. Keep the default threshold or tune it for your workload.
- What to do when the alert fires (more details in the next section).
Then select Create.
2. Alert on a Performance chart
Sometimes you don't care which database it is. You just want to know when any of your databases are in trouble.
Hover over a chart on the Performance page and select the lightning bolt icon. The query behind the chart becomes the query for your alert. For example, you can get notified whenever any of your databases have had high CPU for more than 5 minutes.
Chart alerts cover every resource on the chart. That includes SQL Server on Azure VMs and SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc, even though templates for them aren't available yet.
Choose what happens when an alert fires
A notification is a good start. But Activator can do a lot more than send a message. Here are a few examples of what you can do when an alert fires:
- Send a Teams message, such as a post in your on-call channel
- Send an email
- Run a Fabric notebook that collects extra diagnostics for the affected database, so the evidence is waiting for you when you start investigating
- Trigger a Power Automate flow, such as opening an incident in the IT service management (ITSM) tool you already use
Activator can also run other Fabric items, like pipelines and Spark jobs. For the full list of actions, see Configure actions for Activator rules.
Every notification links you straight into Activator. There you'll see:
- The metric trend, with your threshold drawn on the chart
- Exactly when the condition was met
- The rule's run history, so you can confirm it's checking as often as you expect
No identities or credentials to manage
When you enable performance monitoring, telemetry is sent to a Microsoft-managed pipeline and data store. Activator rules query that data store, not your databases. That means:
- There are no additional credentials or identities to create on your databases
- Alert queries don't add load to your databases
- Alert rules run with your identity. You can alert on telemetry for any resource where you have the Reader role on its subscription.
Keep in mind that anyone who can open your rule, or who receives its notifications, sees the telemetry it returns. They don't need their own access to those resources. Choose your workspace and recipients accordingly.
Things to know during the preview
- Alerts run on Fabric capacity.
- Database Hub is free.
- Activator rules run in a Fabric workspace and use that workspace's capacity. Standard Activator capacity usage applies.
- See all your alerts in one place. The Rules page in Real-Time hub shows every Activator rule you have access to across workspaces. That includes the ones you create from Database Hub.
- Low end-to-end latency. How quickly an alert fires depends on two intervals:
- Collection interval. Each type of telemetry is collected on its own schedule. Fast-moving metrics like CPU are collected every 10 to 15 seconds. For the interval for each table, see Query performance monitoring telemetry.
- Query interval. Activator can run your alert query as often as every minute.
What's next
We're just getting started. Here's what we're working on:
- More templates for Azure SQL Database
- Templates for SQL Server on Azure VMs and SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc
- Templates for Azure SQL Managed Instance, once performance monitoring for Managed Instance is available
- Alerts for Azure Database for PostgreSQL and Azure Cosmos DB
- Handing an alert off to a database agent so it can start the investigation for you
Get started
- Open Database Hub in Fabric.
- Turn on performance monitoring for your SQL resources. See Enable performance monitoring for Microsoft SQL.
- Make sure you have a Fabric workspace on a Fabric capacity to save your alerts in. A Fabric trial capacity works for trying it out.
- On the Estate page, hover over a database and open the quick actions menu. Then select Set alert from template.
- Pick a template and choose your action. Then select Create.
For the full walkthrough, see Create Activator alerts for Microsoft SQL.
Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments. We especially want to hear which templates you want us to build next.
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