SQL Server Health Checks

SQL Server Health Checks run server-level checks and show findings that can affect reliability, performance, configuration, and operations.

What Health Checks Are For

Use health checks to detect configuration risks, maintenance gaps, resource concerns, and operational issues that are easy to miss during incident response.

Workflow

1. Open Health Check for the SQL Server.
2. Run or refresh the checks.
3. Review severity, status, finding text, and recommendations.
4. Select a finding for detail where available.
5. Use related pages to validate the issue and track remediation.

How To Prioritize Health Check Findings

Health checks are most useful when findings are prioritized by risk and context. Start with issues that affect availability, backups, corruption risk, capacity, security exposure, or recurring performance pain. Lower-priority configuration warnings may still matter, but they should not distract from urgent operational risk.

For service review work, export or summarize health check findings with supporting evidence from queries, waits, files, Agent jobs, and alerts. A good remediation plan should include the finding, affected server, business impact, recommended action, owner, and target date.

SQL Server Health Check FAQ

Are all health check findings urgent?

No. Some are informational or best-practice warnings. Review severity and business context before acting.

Should I change configuration directly from a health check?

Use your normal change process. Health checks provide evidence and recommendations, but production changes should be reviewed and tested.

Why do health checks need extra permissions?

Some checks read SQL Server metadata, Agent jobs, error logs, server properties, or database-level details that require additional permissions.

Follow-Up Pages

• Use Files and Drives for storage findings.
• Use Query Store and Cached SQL for query findings.
• Use Agent Jobs for job and maintenance findings.
• Use Always On for availability group findings.

Health Check Reference

The following Mini DBA SQL Server health check detail pages explain the purpose of each check and the actions to take when a check fails.

Related Pages

• SQL Server database health checks
• Reports
• Alerts