Use system insights to improve system performance

MySQL | PostgreSQL | SQL Server

This page describes how you can use the Cloud SQL System insights dashboard. The System insights dashboard displays metrics for the resources that your instance uses and helps you detect and analyze system performance problems.

View the System insights dashboard

To view the System insights dashboard, do the following:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Cloud SQL Instances page.

Go to Cloud SQL Instances
Click the name of an instance.
Select the System insights tab from the SQL navigation panel on the left.

The System insights dashboard opens.

Dashboard image showing metrics and events timeline.

Figure 1. Dashboard image showing events timeline and summary cards.

The System insights dashboard shows the following information:

Your instance details
Events timeline: shows the system events, in a chronological order. This information helps you evaluate the impact of system events on the health and performance of the instance.
Summary cards: provide an overview of the instance health and performance by displaying the latest and aggregated values for the CPU utilization, disk utilization, and log errors metrics.
Metrics charts: show the information about the operating system and database metrics that help you gain insight into several issues, such as throughput, latency, and cost.

The dashboard offers the following high-level options:

To create a customized dashboard, click Mode edit.

To keep the dashboard up to date, enable the Auto Refresh option. When you enable Auto Refresh, the dashboard data updates every minute. This feature isn't compatible with customized time periods.
The time selector shows 1 day selected by default. To change the period, select one of the other predefined periods or click Custom and define a start and end time. Data is available for the last 30 days.
To create an absolute link to the dashboard, click the Copy Link button. You can share this link with other Cloud SQL users who have the same permissions.
To create an alert for a specific event, click Notification.
To display specific alerts, click Annotations.

Summary cards

The following table describes the summary cards displayed at the top of the System Insights dashboard. These cards provide a brief overview of the instance's health and performance during the chosen time period.

Summary card	Description
CPU utilization - P50	The P50 CPU utilization values.
CPU utilization - P99	The P99 CPU utilization values.
Disk utilization	The latest disk utilization value.
Buffer cache hit ratio	The percentage of pages found in the buffer cache without having to read from a disk.

Metrics charts

A chart card for a sample metric appears as follows.

Graph showing sample Cloud SQL metric data.

Metric chart showing metrics data.

The toolbar on each chart card provides the following set of standard options:

To view metric values for a specific moment in the selected period, move the cursor over the chart.
To zoom in on a chart, click the chart and drag horizontally along the x-axis or vertically along the y-axis. To revert the zoom operation, click Reset zoom. Or, click one of the predefined time periods at the top of the dashboard. Zoom operations apply at the same time to all charts on a dashboard.
To view additional options, click More chart options. Most charts offer these options:
- To view a chart in full-screen mode, click View in full screen. To exit full-screen mode, click Cancel.
- Hide or collapse the legend.
- Download a PNG or CSV file of the chart.
- View in Metrics Explorer. View the metric in Metrics Explorer. You can view other Cloud SQL metrics in the Metrics Explorer after selecting the Cloud SQL Database resource type.
To create a custom dashboard, click Customize dashboard and give it a name. Or, expand the Predefined menu and select an existing custom dashboard.
To view a metric chart's data in detail, click Explore data. Here, you can filter specific metrics and choose how the chart displays:

Customizable view of Cloud SQL metric data.

To save this customized view as a metric chart, click Save to dashboard.

Default metrics

The following table describes the Cloud SQL metrics that appear by default on the Cloud SQL System insights dashboard.

The metric type strings follow this prefix: cloudsql.googleapis.com/database/.

Metric name and type	Description
CPU utilization `database/cpu/utilization`	The current CPU utilization represented as a percentage of the reserved CPU that's currently in use.
Memory usage `database/memory/usage`	The RAM usage in bytes.
Total memory usage `database/memory/total_usage`	The total RAM usage in bytes.
Bytes used `database/disk/bytes_used`	The data utilization in bytes.
Disk quota `database/disk/quota`	The maximum data disk size in bytes.
Disk read I/O `database/disk/read_ops_count`	The change in count of data disk read I/O operations since the preview reported metric. Sampled every 60 seconds.
Disk write I/O `database/disk/write_ops_count`	The change in count of data disk write I/O operations since the preview reported metric. Sampled every 60 seconds.
Received bytes `database/network/received_bytes_count`	The change in count of bytes received through the network since the preview reported metric. Sampled every 60 seconds.
Sent bytes `database/network/sent_bytes_count`	The change in count of bytes sent through the network since the preview reported metric. Sampled every 60 seconds.
Buffer cache hit ratio `database/sqlserver/memory/buffer_cache_hit_ratio`	The current percentage of pages found in the buffer cache without having to read from disk. The ratio is the total number of cache hits divided by the total number of cache lookups.
Memory grants pending `database/sqlserver/memory/memory_grants_pending`	The current number of processes waiting for a workspace memory grant.
Free list stalls `database/sqlserver/memory/free_list_stall_count`	The total number of requests that waited for a free page.
Pages Swapped In Count `database/swap/pages_swapped_in_count`	The total count of pages swapped in of disk since the system was booted.
Pages Swapped Out Count `database/swap/pages_swapped_out_count`	The total count of pages swapped out of disk since the system was booted.
Checkpoint pages `database/sqlserver/memory/checkpoint_page_count`	The total number of pages flushed to disk by a checkpoint or other operation that requires all dirty pages to be flushed.
Lazy writes `database/sqlserver/memory/lazy_write_count`	The total number of buffers written by the buffer manager's lazy writer. The lazy writer is a system process that flushes out batches of dirty, aged buffers (buffers that contain changes that must be written back to disk before the buffer can be reused for a different page) and makes them available to user processes.
Page life expectancy `database/sqlserver/memory/page_life_expectancy`	The current number of seconds a page will stay in the buffer pool without references.
Page operations `database/sqlserver/memory/page_operation_count`	The total number of physical database page reads or writes. This statistic counts physical page reads or writes across all databases.
Page splits `database/sqlserver/transaction/page_split_count`	The total number of page splits that occur as the result of overflowing index pages.
Deadlocks `database/sqlserver/transaction/deadlock_count`	The total number of lock requests that resulted in a deadlock.
Transactions started `database/sqlserver/transaction/transaction_count`	The total number of transactions started.
Batch requests `database/sqlserver/transaction/batch_request_count`	The total number of Transact-SQL command batches received.
SQL compilations `database/sqlserver/transaction/sql_compilation_count`	The total number of SQL compilations.
SQL recompilations `database/sqlserver/transaction/sql_recompilation_count`	The total number of SQL recompilations.
Processes blocked `database/sqlserver/connections/processes_blocked`	The current number of blocked processes.
Lock wait time `database/sqlserver/transactions/lock_wait_time`	The total time lock requests were waiting for locks.
Lock waits `database/sqlserver/transactions/lock_wait_count`	The total number of lock requests that required the caller to wait.
Cloud SQL connections `database/network/connections`	The number of connections to databases on the Cloud SQL instance.
Login attempts `database/sqlserver/connections/login_attempt_count`	The total number of login attempts since the last restart of SQL Server service. This does not include pooled connections.
Logouts `database/sqlserver/connections/logout_count`	The total number of logout operations since the last restart of SQL Server service.
Connection resets `database/sqlserver/connections/connection_reset_count`	The total number of logins started from the connection pool since the last restart of SQL Server service.
Log entries `log_entry_count`	The number of log entries, either written directly or routed to this project via project-sink, that are stored in at least one log bucket. By default, log entries are stored for 30 days. Excluded logs are not counted.
Full scans `database/sqlserver/transactions/full_scan_count`	The total number of unrestricted full scans. These can be either base-table or full-index scans.

For more information, see Cloud SQL metrics.

Events timeline

The dashboard provides the details of the following events:

Event name	Description	Operation type
`Instance restart`	Restarts the Cloud SQL instance	`RESTART`
`Instance failover`	Initiates a manual failover of a high availability (HA) primary instance to a standby instance, which becomes the primary instance.	`FAILOVER`
`Instance maintenance`	Indicates that the instance is currently in maintenance. Maintenance typically causes the instance to be unavailable for 1 to 3 minutes.	`MAINTENANCE`
`Instance backup`	Performs an instance backup.	`BACKUP_VOLUME`
`Instance update`	Updates the settings of a Cloud SQL instance.	`UPDATE`
`Promote replica`	Promotes a Cloud SQL replica instance.	`PROMOTE_REPLICA`
`Start replica`	Starts replication on a Cloud SQL read replica instance.	`START_REPLICA`
`Stop replica`	Stops replication on a Cloud SQL read replica instance.	`STOP_REPLICA`