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Use the Object Explorer Details to Monitor Availability Groups (SQL Server Management Studio)

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This topic describes how to use the Object Explorer Details pane of SQL Server Management Studio to monitor and manage existing AlwaysOn availability groups, availability replicas, and availability databases.

Note

For information about using the Object Explorer Details pane, see Object Explorer Details Pane.

Before You Begin

Prerequisites

You must be connected to the instance of SQL Server (server instance) that hosts either the primary replica or a secondary replica.

Using SQL Server Management Studio

To monitor availability groups, availability replicas, and availability databases

  1. On the View menu, click Object Explorer Details, or press the F7 key.

  2. In Object Explorer, connect to the instance of SQL Server on which you want to monitor an availability group, and click the server name to expand the server tree.

  3. Expand the AlwaysOn High Availability node and the Availability Groups node.

  4. The Object Explorer Details pane displays every availability group for which the connected server instance hosts a replica. For each availability group, the Server Instance (Primary) column displays the name of the server instance that is currently hosting the primary replica. To display more information about a given availability group, select it in Object Explorer.

  5. The Object Explorer Details pane then displays the Availability Replicas and Availability Databases nodes for this availability group:

    • When you expand the Availability Group node in Object Explorer and select the Availability Replicas node, the Object Explorer Details pane displays information about each of the availability replicas in the group. For more information, see Availability Replica Details, later in this topic.

      To perform operations on multiple availability replicas, select them, and right-click them to open up a context menu that lists the available commands.

    • When you expand the Availability Group node in Object Explorer and select the Availability Databases node, the Object Explorer Details pane displays information about each of the availability databases in the group. For more information, see Availability Database Details, later in this topic.

      To perform operations on multiple availability databases, select them, and right-click them to open up a context menu that lists the available commands.

Availability Groups Details

The Availability Groups details screen displays the following columns:

Name
Lists the Availability Replicas, Availability Databases, and Availability Group Listeners folders of the selected availability group.

Availability Replica Details

The Availability Replica details screen displays the following columns:

Server Instance
Displays the name of the server instance that hosts the availability replica, along with an icon that indicates the current connection state of the server instance to the local server instance.

Role
Indicates the current role of the availability replica, either Primary or Secondary. For information about Always On Availability Groups roles, see Overview of AlwaysOn Availability Groups (SQL Server).

Connection Mode in Secondary Role
Indicates whether the databases of a given availability replica that is performing the secondary role (that is, is acting as a secondary replica) can accept connections from clients.

The possible values are as follows:

Value Description
Disallow Connections No direct connections are allowed to the availability databases when this availability replica is acting as a secondary replica. Secondary databases are not available for read access.
Allow Only Read Intent Connections Only direct read-only connections are allowed when this replica acting as a secondary replica. All database(s) in the replica are available for read access.
Allow All Connections All connections are allowed to these databases for read-only access when this replica acting as a secondary replica.

Connection State
Indicates whether a secondary replica is currently connected to the primary replica. The possible values are as follows:

Value Description
Disconnected For a remote availability replica, indicates that it is disconnected from the local availability replica. The response of the local replica to the Disconnected state depends on its role, as follows:

On the primary replica, if a secondary replica is disconnected, the secondary databases are marked as Not Synchronized on the primary replica, and the primary replica waits for the secondary to reconnect.

On the secondary replica, upon detecting that it is disconnected, the secondary replica attempts to reconnect to the primary replica.
Connected A remote availability replica that is currently connected to the local replica.
NULL If the local replica is a secondary replica, this value is NULL for other secondary replicas.

Synchronization State
Indicates whether a secondary replica is currently synchronized with primary replica. The possible values are as follows:

Value Description
Not Synchronized The database is not synchronized or has not yet been joined to the availability group.
Synchronized The database is synchronized with the primary database on the current primary replica, if any, or on the last primary replica.

Note: In performance mode, the database is never in the Synchronized state.
NULL Unknown state. This value occurs when the local server instance cannot communicate with the WSFC failover cluster (that is the local node is not part of WSFC quorum).

Note

For information about performance counters for availability replicas, see SQL Server, Availability Replica.

Availability Database Details

The Availability Database details screen displays the following properties of the availability databases in a given availability group:

Name
The name of the availability database.

Synchronization State
Indicates whether the availability database is currently synchronized with primary replica.

The possible synchronization states are as follows:

Value Description
Synchronizing The secondary database has received the transaction log records for the primary database that are not yet written to disk (hardened).

Note: In asynchronous-commit mode, the synchronization state is always Synchronizing.

Suspended
Indicates whether the availability database is currently online. The possible values are as follows:

Value Description
Suspended This state indicates that the database is suspended locally and needs to be manually resumed.

On the primary replica, the value is unreliable for a secondary database. To reliably determine whether a secondary database is suspended, query it on the secondary replica that hosts the database.
Not Joined Indicates that the secondary database either has not been joined to the availability group or has been removed from the group.
Online Indicates that the database is not suspended on the local availability replica and that the database is connected.
Not Connected Indicates that the secondary replica is currently unable to connect to the primary replica.

Note

For information about performance counters for availability databases, see SQL Server, Database Replica.

See Also

sys.dm_os_performance_counters (Transact-SQL)
Use the AlwaysOn Dashboard (SQL Server Management Studio)
View Availability Group Properties (SQL Server)
View Availability Replica Properties (SQL Server)