I am a big fan of this feature, I have written and spoken about it before ( https://blobeater.blog/2018/01/04/azure-sql-analytics/) but I did not cover HOW to set this up. In the previous post mentioned above all I stated was:

• Setup a Log Analytics workspace.
• Enable diagnostics for your SQL Databases and/or elastic pools.

So let’s actually go through the steps to configure this for a SQL elastic pool. I am actually going to enable diagnostics first and during that process setup a log analytics workspace. Please note, the same applies to a logical SQL Server or Azure SQL Database.

In the monitoring section of your elastic pool (or server / database) you will see the diagnostics setting.

As you can see I already have enabled this called SQLAnalytics and linked it to the Azureworkspacesql1 log analytics (Yes I did make a spelling mistake……). What you need to do is click the Add diagnostic setting.

Give it a name and link it to log analytics by selecting “send to log analytics” where then you will be able to configure the workspace.

The free pricing tier works fine for this solution.  Once you have done this tick the All Metrics option and deploy it.

That is all! We have setup SQL Analytics. I usually pin it to the start menu.

Drilling into it you will see some data, for me after 10-15 minutes.