Use PowerShell to monitor and scale an elastic pool in Azure SQL Database

Applies to: Azure SQL Database

This PowerShell script example monitors the performance metrics of an elastic pool, scales it to a higher compute size, and creates an alert rule on one of the performance metrics.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create an Azure free account before you begin.

Note

This article uses the Azure Az PowerShell module, which is the recommended PowerShell module for interacting with Azure. To get started with the Az PowerShell module, see Install Azure PowerShell. To learn how to migrate to the Az PowerShell module, see Migrate Azure PowerShell from AzureRM to Az.

Use Azure Cloud Shell

Azure hosts Azure Cloud Shell, an interactive shell environment that you can use through your browser. You can use either Bash or PowerShell with Cloud Shell to work with Azure services. You can use the Cloud Shell preinstalled commands to run the code in this article, without having to install anything on your local environment.

To start Azure Cloud Shell:

Option Example/Link
Select Try It in the upper-right corner of a code block. Selecting Try It doesn't automatically copy the code to Cloud Shell. Screenshot that shows an example of Try It for Azure Cloud Shell.
Go to https://shell.azure.com, or select the Launch Cloud Shell button to open Cloud Shell in your browser. Screenshot that shows how to launch Cloud Shell in a new window.
Select the Cloud Shell button on the menu bar at the upper right in the Azure portal. Screenshot that shows the Cloud Shell button in the Azure portal

To run the code in this article in Azure Cloud Shell:

  1. Start Cloud Shell.

  2. Select the Copy button on a code block to copy the code.

  3. Paste the code into the Cloud Shell session by selecting Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows and Linux, or by selecting Cmd+Shift+V on macOS.

  4. Select Enter to run the code.

If you choose to install and use PowerShell locally, this tutorial requires Az PowerShell 1.4.0 or later. If you need to upgrade, see Install Azure PowerShell module. If you are running PowerShell locally, you also need to run Connect-AzAccount to create a connection with Azure.

Sample script

# This script requires the following
# - Az.Resources
# - Az.Accounts
# - Az.Monitor
# - Az.Sql

# First, run Connect-AzAccount

# Set the subscription in which to create these objects. This is displayed on objects in the Azure portal.
$SubscriptionId = ''
# Set the resource group name and location for your server
$resourceGroupName = "myResourceGroup-$(Get-Random)"
$location = "westus2"
# Set elastic pool name
$poolName = "MySamplePool"
# Set an admin login and password for your database
$adminSqlLogin = "SqlAdmin"
$password = (New-Guid).Guid # Generates a randomized GUID password. 
# Set server name - the logical server name has to be unique in the system
$serverName = "server-$(Get-Random)"
# The sample database names
$firstDatabaseName = "myFirstSampleDatabase"
$secondDatabaseName = "mySecondSampleDatabase"
# The ip address range that you want to allow to access your server via the firewall rule
$startIp = "0.0.0.0"
$endIp = "0.0.0.0"

# Set subscription 
Set-AzContext -SubscriptionId $subscriptionId 

# Create a new resource group
$resourceGroup = New-AzResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroupName -Location $location

# Create a new server with a system wide unique server name
$server = New-AzSqlServer -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -Location $location `
    -SqlAdministratorCredentials $(New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $adminSqlLogin, $(ConvertTo-SecureString -String $password -AsPlainText -Force))

# Create elastic database pool
$elasticPool = New-AzSqlElasticPool -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -ElasticPoolName $poolName `
    -Edition "Standard" `
    -Dtu 50 `
    -DatabaseDtuMin 10 `
    -DatabaseDtuMax 50

# Create a server firewall rule that allows access from the specified IP range
$serverFirewallRule = New-AzSqlServerFirewallRule -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -FirewallRuleName "AllowedIPs" -StartIpAddress $startIp -EndIpAddress $endIp

# Create two blank database in the pool
$firstDatabase = New-AzSqlDatabase  -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -DatabaseName $firstDatabaseName `
    -ElasticPoolName $poolName
$secondDatabase = New-AzSqlDatabase  -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -DatabaseName $secondDatabaseName `
    -ElasticPoolName $poolName

# Monitor the DTU consumption of the pool in 5 minute intervals
$monitorparameters = @{
  ResourceId = "/subscriptions/$($(Get-AzContext).Subscription.Id)/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/$serverName/elasticPools/$poolName"
  TimeGrain = [TimeSpan]::Parse("00:05:00")
  MetricNames = "dtu_consumption_percent"
}
$metric = Get-AzMetric @monitorparameters
$metric.Data

# Scale the pool
$elasticPool = Set-AzSqlElasticPool -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -ServerName $serverName `
    -ElasticPoolName $poolName `
    -Edition "Standard" `
    -Dtu 100 `
    -DatabaseDtuMin 20 `
    -DatabaseDtuMax 100

# Set up an Alert rule using Azure Monitor for the database
# Add an Alert that fires when the pool utilization reaches 90%
# Objects needed: an Action Group Receiver, an Action Group, Alert Criteria, and finally an Alert Rule.

# Creates an new action group receiver object with a target email address.
$receiver = New-AzActionGroupReceiver `
    -Name "my Sample Azure Admins" `
    -EmailAddress "azure-admins-group@contoso.com"

# Creates a new or updates an existing action group.
$actionGroup = Set-AzActionGroup `
    -Name "mysample-email-the-azure-admins" `
    -ShortName "AzAdminsGrp" `
    -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -Receiver $receiver

# Fetch the created AzActionGroup into an object of type Microsoft.Azure.Management.Monitor.Models.ActivityLogAlertActionGroup
$actionGroupObject = New-AzActionGroup -ActionGroupId $actionGroup.Id

# Create a criteria for the Alert to monitor.
$criteria = New-AzMetricAlertRuleV2Criteria `
    -MetricName "dtu_consumption_percent" `
    -TimeAggregation Average `
    -Operator GreaterThan `
    -Threshold 90

# Create the Alert rule.
# Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 adds or updates a V2 (non-classic) metric-based alert rule.
Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 -Name "mySample_Alert_DTU_consumption_pct" `
        -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
        -WindowSize (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 1) `
        -Frequency (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 1) `
        -TargetResourceId "/subscriptions/$($(Get-AzContext).Subscription.Id)/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/$serverName/elasticPools/$poolName"  `
        -Condition $criteria `
        -ActionGroup $actionGroupObject `
        -Severity 3 #Informational

<#
# Set up an alert rule using Azure Monitor for the database
# Add a classic alert that fires when the pool utilization reaches 90%
# Note that Add-AzMetricAlertRule is deprecated. Use Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 instead.
Add-AzMetricAlertRule -ResourceGroup $resourceGroupName `
    -Name "mySampleAlertRule" `
    -Location $location `
    -TargetResourceId "/subscriptions/$($(Get-AzContext).Subscription.Id)/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/$serverName/elasticPools/$poolName" `
    -MetricName "dtu_consumption_percent" `
    -Operator "GreaterThan" `
    -Threshold 90 `
    -WindowSize $([TimeSpan]::Parse("00:05:00")) `
    -TimeAggregationOperator "Average" `
    -Action $(New-AzAlertRuleEmail -SendToServiceOwner)
#>

# Clean up deployment 
# Remove-AzResourceGroup -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName

Clean up deployment

Use the following command to remove the resource group and all resources associated with it.

Remove-AzResourceGroup -ResourceGroupName $resourcegroupname

Script explanation

This script uses the following commands. Each command in the table links to command-specific documentation.

Command Notes
New-AzResourceGroup Creates a resource group in which all resources are stored.
New-AzSqlServer Creates a server that hosts databases or elastic pools.
New-AzSqlElasticPool Creates an elastic pool.
New-AzSqlDatabase Creates a database in a server.
Get-AzMetric Shows the size usage information for the database.
Set-AzSqlElasticPool Updates elastic pool properties.
Add-AzMetricAlertRule (DeprecateD) Adds or updates an alert rule to automatically monitor metrics in the future. Applies only to classic metric-based alert rules.
Add-AzMetricAlertRuleV2 Adds or updates an alert rule to automatically monitor metrics in the future. Applies only to non-classic metric-based alert rules.
Remove-AzResourceGroup Deletes a resource group including all nested resources.

Next steps

For more information on Azure PowerShell, see Azure PowerShell documentation.

Additional PowerShell script samples can be found in Azure PowerShell scripts.