You can answer quite a few questions by just looking at the availability group animations. You\u2019re seeing static screen shots on this blog post\u00a0\u2013 but keep in mind that this view changes state dynamically. The image below shows me that \u201cAG-Test2\u201d has two replicas on two nodes out of the four node WSFC:<\/p>\n

If animated topology layouts aren\u2019t your thing, you have a series of tabs below the layout pane that are responsive to the objects you click in the layout area. Tabs cover WSFCs, WSFC Members, Instances, FCIs, Availability Groups, Replicas, Databases, Database Replica States and Availability Group Listener information. Below shows an example of database replica states information:<\/p>\n

In the upper-right hand pane you\u2019ll see dynamic chart graphics depending on where you\u2019ve clicked. For example, selecting a specific WSFC Member on the WSFC Members tab shows the following KB From Replica\/Sec data:<\/p>\n

I do have a few items on the wish list:<\/p>\n

\n
• A new name. \u201cAlwaysOn\u201d is a Microsoft marketing term that encompasses more than Availability Groups, so I think the name should be \u201cAvailability Group Monitoring.\u201d<\/li>\n
• Dynamic auto-zoom based on the number of objects in a topology.<\/li>\n
• I think some of the graphical elements could use some clarity \u2013 for example, adding a legend that translates the symbols for new users of this functionality.<\/li>\n
• Have an easy\u00a0way to export out the tabular data from the various panes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  My first impressions are very favorable and I do think this is a useful tool \u2013 particularly for environments that have numerous availability groups and higher complexity topologies.<\/p>\n

  PS:\u00a0This product also provides\u00a0built-in alerting for health changes and failovers that isn’t provided natively by Microsoft, but I didn’t get a chance to investigate this yet.\u00a0 I do plan on testing this out in the future and will share any interesting findings accordingly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Now before I begin this post, a quick disclaimer\u2026 SQLskills partners with SQL Sentry on a couple of things. We periodically write guest-posts on SQLPerformance.com and SQL Sentry also provides exclusive sponsorship of two of our Immersion Events. I am also a big fan of SQL Sentry Plan Explorer, but that would have been the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-performance"],"yoast_head":"\n