SQL Server Performance Monitor

Free, open-source monitoring that replaces the tools charging you thousands per server per year. 30+ collectors, real-time alerts, built-in MCP server for AI analysis. Nothing phones home. Your data stays on your server and your machine.

Supported: SQL Server 2016–2025 | Azure SQL Managed Instance | AWS RDS for SQL Server | Azure SQL Database (Lite only)

Download

👉 Not sure which edition to pick? Start with Lite. One download, nothing installed on your server, data flowing in under 5 minutes.

Both editions include real-time alerts (system tray + email), charts and graphs, dark and light themes, CSV export, and a built-in MCP server for AI-powered analysis with tools like Claude.

What People Are Saying

"You guys make us DBAs look like absolute rockstars. I'm over here getting showered with praise, and all I do is use your scripts and follow your advice."

"replaced SentryOne and had it running in 10 minutes"

"I've had enough time to gather data and converse with Claude on this. It helped a lot to zone in on CPU starvation from the hypervisor on which the VM runs. IT team currently investigating the host configuration."

What You Get

🔍 32 specialized T-SQL collectors running on configurable schedules — wait stats, query performance, blocking chains, deadlock graphs, memory grants, file I/O, tempdb, perfmon counters, and more. Query text and execution plan collection can be disabled per-collector for sensitive environments.

🚨 Real-time alerts for blocking, deadlocks, and high CPU — system tray notifications plus styled HTML emails with full XML attachments for offline analysis

📊 NOC-style dashboard with green/yellow/red health cards, auto-refresh, configurable time ranges, and dark/light themes

📋 Graphical plan viewer with native ShowPlan rendering, 30-rule PlanAnalyzer, operator-level cost breakdown, and a standalone mode for opening .sqlplan files without a server connection

🤖 Built-in MCP server with 27-31 read-only tools for AI analysis — ask Claude Code or Cursor "what are the top wait types on my server?" and get answers from your actual monitoring data

🧰 Community tools installed automatically — sp_WhoIsActive, sp_BlitzLock, sp_HealthParser, sp_HumanEventsBlockViewer

🔒 Your data never leaves — no telemetry, no cloud dependency, no phoning home. Credentials stored in Windows Credential Manager with OS-level encryption.

More Screenshots

Lite Edition — Query Performance

Graphical Plan Viewer

Alert Notifications

MCP Server — AI-Powered Analysis

Quick Start — Lite Edition

1. Download and extract PerformanceMonitorLite (requires .NET 8 Desktop Runtime)
2. Run PerformanceMonitorLite.exe
3. Click + Add Server, enter connection details, test, save
4. Double-click the server in the sidebar to connect

Data starts flowing within 1–5 minutes. That's it. No installation on your server, no Agent jobs, no sysadmin required.

Lite Collectors

20 collectors run on independent, configurable schedules:

Lite Data Storage

• Hot data in DuckDB (7–90 days, configurable)
• Archive to Parquet with ZSTD compression (~10x reduction, 30–180 days configurable)
• Typical size: ~50–200 MB per server per week

Lite Configuration

All configuration lives in the config/ folder:

Quick Start — Full Edition

Install

Windows Authentication:

PerformanceMonitorInstaller.exe YourServerName

SQL Authentication:

PerformanceMonitorInstaller.exe YourServerName sa YourPassword

Clean reinstall (drops existing database and all collected data):

PerformanceMonitorInstaller.exe YourServerName --reinstall
PerformanceMonitorInstaller.exe YourServerName sa YourPassword --reinstall

The installer automatically tests the connection, executes SQL scripts, downloads community dependencies, creates SQL Agent jobs, and runs initial data collection. A GUI installer (InstallerGui/) is also available with the same functionality.

CLI Installer Options

Environment variable: Set PM_SQL_PASSWORD to avoid passing the password on the command line.

Exit Codes

Post-Installation

1. Ensure SQL Server Agent is running — the collection job executes every minute
2. Verify installation:

SELECT * FROM PerformanceMonitor.config.current_version;

SELECT TOP (20) *
FROM PerformanceMonitor.config.collection_log
ORDER BY collection_time DESC;

3. Launch the Dashboard (Dashboard/ folder — build with dotnet build or use the release package). The Dashboard is a separate WPF application that runs on your workstation and connects to any SQL Server where the PerformanceMonitor database is installed. Add your server, enter credentials, and data appears immediately.

What Gets Installed

• PerformanceMonitor database with collection tables and reporting views
• 32 collector stored procedures for gathering metrics (including SQL Agent job monitoring)
• Configurable collection — query text and execution plan capture can be disabled per-collector via config.collection_schedule (collect_query, collect_plan columns) for sensitive or high-volume environments
• Delta framework for calculating per-second rates from cumulative DMVs
• Community dependencies: sp_WhoIsActive, sp_HealthParser, sp_HumanEventsBlockViewer, sp_BlitzLock
• SQL Agent jobs: Collection (every 1 minute), Data Retention (daily at 2:00 AM), and Hung Job Monitor (collection job watchdog, every 5 minutes)
• Version tracking in config.installation_history

Data Retention

Default: 30 days (configurable per table in config.retention_settings).

Storage estimates: 5–10 GB per week, 20–40 GB per month.

Managed Platform Support

The Full Edition supports Azure SQL Managed Instance and AWS RDS for SQL Server with some limitations:

Azure SQL MI: The installer automatically detects Engine Edition 8 and disables 4 collectors that require file system access or SQL Trace (default_trace, trace_management, trace_analysis, system_health). All other collectors work normally.

AWS RDS: The installer automatically detects the rdsadmin database and disables the running_jobs_collector (requires msdb.dbo.syssessions which is restricted on RDS). It also gracefully handles restricted sp_configure and limited msdb permissions. SQL Agent jobs are created and owned by the installing login. The RDS master user is automatically enrolled in SQLAgentUserRole; for other logins, add them to SQLAgentUserRole in msdb before running the installer.

AWS RDS Parameter Group Configuration

sp_configure is not available on AWS RDS for SQL Server. Features that depend on server-level configuration must be set through AWS RDS Parameter Groups instead.

Blocked process threshold — Required for blocked process report collection. Without this, blocked process reports will not fire on RDS.

1. Open the AWS RDS Console and navigate to Parameter groups

2. Create a new parameter group (or modify the one attached to your instance):

   • Family: sqlserver-ee-16.0 (or your edition/version)
   • Type: DB Parameter Group

3. Search for blocked process threshold (s) and set it to 5 (seconds)

4. Apply the parameter group to your RDS instance (may require a reboot if the parameter is static)

5. Verify it took effect:

   SELECT
       c.name,
       c.value_in_use
   FROM sys.configurations AS c
   WHERE c.name = N'blocked process threshold (s)';
   

Deadlocks — No parameter group configuration is required. The SQL Server deadlock monitor runs automatically on all platforms, and the xml_deadlock_report Extended Event fires without any threshold setting.

Azure SQL Database — The blocked process threshold is fixed at 20 seconds and cannot be changed. The blocked_process_report event fires automatically when blocking exceeds this duration.

Edition Comparison

Dashboard Tabs

Full Edition Dashboard

Plus a NOC-style landing page with server health cards (green/yellow/red severity indicators).

Lite Edition Dashboard

Both editions feature auto-refresh, configurable time ranges, right-click CSV export, system tray integration, dark and light themes, and timezone display options (server time, local time, or UTC).

Alerts & Notifications

Both editions include a real-time alert engine that monitors for performance issues and sends notifications via system tray balloons and email.

Alert Types

All thresholds are configurable in Settings.

Notification Channels

• System tray — balloon notifications with 5-minute per-metric cooldown
• Email (SMTP) — styled HTML emails with 15-minute per-metric cooldown, configurable SMTP settings (server, port, SSL, authentication, recipients)

Email Alerts

Alert emails include:

• Metric summary — what triggered the alert, current value vs threshold
• Detail section — recent blocking chains or deadlock participants with query text, wait times, lock modes, database names, and client application
• XML attachment — full blocked_process_report.xml or deadlock_graph.xml for offline analysis

Alert Behavior

• Resolved notifications — when a condition clears (e.g., blocking ends), a "Cleared" notification fires
• Server silencing — right-click a server tab to acknowledge alerts, silence all alerts, or unsilence
• Always-on — the Dashboard alert engine runs independently of which tab is active, including when minimized to the system tray. The Lite edition's alert engine also runs regardless of tab visibility.
• Alert history — Dashboard keeps an in-memory alert log (accessible via MCP). Lite logs alerts to DuckDB (config_alert_log).

Agent Job Monitoring

Both editions monitor currently running SQL Agent jobs and flag jobs that are running longer than expected.

The Full Edition collects this data via the collect.running_jobs_collector stored procedure (every 5 minutes). The Lite Edition queries msdb directly on each collection cycle. Both editions expose this data through the MCP get_running_jobs tool.

Gracefully skipped on Azure SQL Database, AWS RDS for SQL Server, and environments without SQL Server Agent.

MCP Server (LLM Integration)

Both editions include an embedded Model Context Protocol server that exposes monitoring data to LLM clients like Claude Code and Cursor.

Setup

1. Enable the MCP server in Settings (checkbox + port, default 5151)
2. Register with Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user sql-monitor http://localhost:5151/

3. Open a new Claude Code session and ask questions like:
   • "What servers are being monitored?"
   • "What are the top wait types on my server?"
   • "Are there any blocking or deadlock issues?"
   • "Show me CPU utilization for the last 4 hours"
   • "What are the most expensive queries by CPU?"

Available Tools

Full Edition exposes 27 tools, Lite Edition exposes 31. Core tools are shared across both editions.

* Lite only | ** Full only

Most tools accept optional server_name and hours_back parameters. If only one server is configured, server_name is auto-resolved.

The MCP server binds to localhost only and does not accept remote connections.

Performance Impact

On Monitored Servers

• All queries use READ UNCOMMITTED isolation
• Configurable collection intervals
• Full Edition: typical overhead <1% CPU, <100 MB memory
• Lite Edition: max 7 concurrent SQL connections, 30-second command timeout

Local Resources (Lite)

• DuckDB: ~50–200 MB per server per week
• Parquet archives: ~10x compression with ZSTD
• ScottPlot charts use hardware-accelerated rendering

Troubleshooting

Full Edition

Two diagnostic scripts in the install/ folder:

SELECT
    collection_time,
    collector_name,
    error_message
FROM PerformanceMonitor.config.collection_log
WHERE collection_status = 'ERROR'
ORDER BY collection_time DESC;

Lite Edition

Application logs are written to the logs/ folder. Collection success/failure is also logged to the collection_log table in DuckDB.

Common issues:

1. No data after connecting — Wait for the first collection cycle (1–5 minutes). Check logs for connection errors.
2. Query Store tab empty — Query Store must be enabled on the target database (ALTER DATABASE [YourDB] SET QUERY_STORE = ON).
3. Blocked process reports empty — Both editions attempt to auto-configure the blocked process threshold to 5 seconds via sp_configure. On AWS RDS, sp_configure is not available — you must set blocked process threshold (s) through an RDS Parameter Group (see "AWS RDS Parameter Group Configuration" above). On Azure SQL Database, the threshold is fixed at 20 seconds and cannot be changed. If you still see no data on other platforms, verify the login has ALTER SETTINGS permission.
4. Connection failures — Verify network connectivity, firewall rules, and that the login has VIEW SERVER STATE.

Folder Structure

Monitor/
│
│   Full Edition (server-installed collectors + separate dashboard)
├── install/          # 54 SQL installation scripts
├── upgrades/         # Version-specific upgrade scripts
├── Installer/        # CLI installer for Full Edition database (C#)
├── InstallerGui/     # GUI installer for Full Edition database (WPF)
├── Dashboard/        # Full Edition dashboard application (WPF)
│
│   Lite Edition (standalone desktop app, nothing installed on server)
├── Lite/             # Lite Edition desktop application (WPF)
│
│   Shared
└── README.md         # This file

Building from Source

All projects target .NET 8.0.

# Full Edition Dashboard
dotnet build Dashboard/Dashboard.csproj

# Lite Edition
dotnet build Lite/PerformanceMonitorLite.csproj

# CLI Installer (self-contained)
dotnet publish Installer/PerformanceMonitorInstaller.csproj -c Release

# GUI Installer
dotnet publish InstallerGui/InstallerGui.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

Support & Sponsorship

This project is free and open source. If you find it valuable, consider supporting continued development:

Neither is required — use the tool freely. Sponsorship and consulting keep this project alive.

Third-Party Components

sp_WhoIsActive

• Author: Adam Machanic | License: GPLv3
• Repository: https://github.com/amachanic/sp_whoisactive

DarlingData

• Author: Erik Darling (Darling Data, LLC) | License: MIT
• Repository: https://github.com/erikdarlingdata/DarlingData

SQL Server First Responder Kit

• Author: Brent Ozar Unlimited | License: MIT
• Repository: https://github.com/BrentOzarULTD/SQL-Server-First-Responder-Kit

See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for complete license texts.

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Darling Data, LLC. Licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Author

Erik Darling — erikdarling.com — Darling Data, LLC