- 4 minutes to read

Managing SQL Instance(s)

Gain full control and visibility over your SQL Server instances with the Nodinite Database Monitoring Agent. Ensure high availability, prevent unplanned downtime, and maintain database infrastructure health.

Why Monitor SQL Server Instances?

SQL Server instance availability is fundamental to application uptime. When instances go down, the impact is immediate and severe:

Application outages – All applications depending on the SQL Server instance become unavailable
Revenue loss – E-commerce, SaaS platforms, and transaction systems stop functioning
User impact – Employees cannot access business applications, customers cannot complete purchases
Data unavailability – Critical business data becomes inaccessible until instance recovery
SLA breaches – Uptime commitments to customers and internal stakeholders are violated

Without proactive monitoring, teams discover instance failures only after users report application errors.

What Does Nodinite Monitor?

The Database Monitoring Agent continuously monitors your configured SQL Server instances, providing:

✅ Availability detection – Instant alerts when SQL Server instances become unreachable ✅ Network connectivity – Identify network or firewall issues preventing SQL Server access ✅ Authentication validation – Detect credential or security configuration problems ✅ SQL Server log access – View current SQL Server error logs remotely for troubleshooting ✅ Instance details – Access comprehensive SQL Server properties (version, edition, memory, etc.) without SSMS ✅ Centralized dashboard – Monitor multiple SQL Server instances across environments from one interface

When to Use SQL Instance Monitoring?

Use this feature when you need to:

Ensure high availability – Get immediate alerts when production SQL Servers go offline
Support distributed architectures – Monitor SQL Server instances across data centers, cloud, and on-premises
Meet uptime SLAs – Detect and respond to instance failures before SLA breaches occur
Empower NOC teams – Enable operations staff to monitor instance health without SQL Server expertise
Track availability trends – Analyze instance uptime patterns over time
Support 24/7 operations – Automate alerts for after-hours instance failures

How It Works

The Database Monitoring Agent continuously monitors your configured SQL Instance(s). Each monitored SQL Instance is represented in Nodinite as a Resource. The evaluated state of each SQL Instance is visible in Monitor Views and can trigger external alerts using any installed Alarm Plugins.

The checks for SQL Instances are grouped by the Category SQL Instance.

Here's an example of a Monitor View filtered by the 'SQL Instance' category.

Your SQL Instances are listed in Nodinite as resources, where the Display name of the SQL Instance configuration becomes the Resource name.

graph LR subgraph "Configuration" c["fal:fa-code 1 SQL Server Instance"] --> r[fal:fa-lightbulb 1 Resource] end

Each configuration is manifested as a Resource.

What are the key features for Monitoring SQL Instance?

State Evaluation – Monitors and evaluates the state of each SQL Instance
Actions – Support for the execution of Remote Actions

What is evaluated for SQL Instance?

The different possible evaluated states for your SQL Instance are provided in the table below:

State	Status	Description	Actions
Unavailable	Resource not available	Evaluation of the 'SQL Instance' is not possible either due to network or security-related problems	Review prerequisites
Error	Error state raised	The SQL Instance is unavailable or cannot be reached	Edit configuration
OK	Online	The SQL Server instance is online, operational and accessible	Edit configuration

Tip
The System Administrator can override the Monitoring state using the Expected State feature on the Resource within Nodinite.

Configuration

Configuration of SQL Instances is described in the Edit configuration user guide.

Actions

The Database Monitoring Agent supports remote actions. The following Actions are available:

Details

Example of viewing SQL Server log details.
View SQL Server Log

View SQL Server Log

You can view the current log for a SQL Server Instance. To reduce network traffic, the result is displayed using pagination.

Example of viewing the SQL Server log.