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SQL Database – Monitor CPU Utilization

This check ensures that CPU utilization for Azure SQL Databases is actively monitored. Monitoring CPU usage helps detect performance bottlenecks, resource exhaustion, and abnormal workload behavior early, ensuring database availability and reliability.

Check Details

  • Resource: SQL Server / SQL Database
  • Check: Monitor SQL Databases CPU Utilization
  • Risk: Without CPU utilization monitoring, high or abnormal CPU usage may go unnoticed, leading to performance degradation, query timeouts and service unavailability.

Remediation via Azure Portal

  1. Log in to the Azure Portal. Azure Portal dashboard
  2. Navigate to Azure SQL Database.
  3. Select the target SQL Database. SQL databases list
  4. From the left-hand menu, go to MonitoringMetrics. SQL database metrics menu
  5. In the metrics configuration:
    • Select CPU percentage as the metric
    • Choose an appropriate time range
    • Review CPU utilization trends
    SQL database CPU utilization metrics
  6. Configure Alerts on CPU percentage to get notified when usage exceeds acceptable thresholds. CPU utilization alert configuration

Monitoring via Azure Monitor (Recommended)

Azure SQL Databases automatically publish CPU utilization metrics to Azure Monitor. To ensure continuous monitoring, configure metric alerts using Azure Monitor or integrate with Log Analytics for advanced analysis.

  1. Open Azure Cloud Shell. Azure Cloud Shell
  2. Create a CPU utilization alert rule:
    az monitor metrics alert create \
      --name HighCPUAlert \
      --resource-group <resource-group-name> \
      --scopes <sql-database-resource-id> \
      --condition "avg cpu_percent > 80" \
      --window-size 5m \
      --evaluation-frequency 1m \
      --severity 2
    

This alert triggers when average CPU usage exceeds 80%, helping teams respond proactively before performance is impacted.