SQL Server Unused Index Monitoring and Reporting Tool

Gain insight into index usage and the impact of SQL Server unused indexes

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List Indexes

Spot Unused Indexes

Report on Usage Metrics

Automate Scheduling

Customize Filters

Easily view SQL Server indexes for clear insights

When it comes to managing your SQL Server index usage, SolarWinds^® SQL Sentry^® is designed to offer an advantage by clearly and accurately listing indexes—including SQL Server unused indexes—in a single tab. In the Index tab, you can discover SQL Server index usage information related to overall index usage (such as total fragmentation) and data corresponding to individual indexes. You can also list your SQL Server indexes in Grid or Tree view with customizable columns including type, primary keys, and empty MB in buffer.

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Find unused indexes in SQL Server and TSQL

With SQL Sentry, you can click on the Index tab to identify unused indexes in SQL Server and TSQL. You can also view SQL Server index usage metrics to more easily discover the seeks, scans, and lookups of specific indexes (low volumes of these index usage stats could indicate an unused index). Additionally, you can examine total read and update operations and note any reads=0 indicating a potentially unused index. By finding and removing SQL Server and TSQL unused indexes, SQL Sentry can help you speed up operations, recover resources, and optimize overall SQL Server performance.

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Discover and report on critical SQL Server index usage metrics, statistics, and more to gain a deeper understanding

SQL Sentry is built to automatically generate in-depth details about your SQL Server index usage, sharing critical insights into SQL Server performance and letting you more easily report on metrics. You can use the data displayed on the Index tab to make informed decisions on index modification, perform fragmentation and defragmentation, troubleshoot bottlenecks, and identify other latency issues. You can also create a comprehensive SQL Server index usage report, run a SQL Server unused indexes reset, and more using these comprehensive SQL Server index usage stats.

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Schedule automated operations for SQL Server index defragmentation

Fragmentation can occur when indexes are modified, resulting in illogical ordering within an index. You can set up a defragmentation schedule using SQL Sentry to automatically perform defragmentation operations. SQL Sentry can allow you to customize the frequency and duration of your scheduled defragmentation. You can also automatically schedule reorganization operations and rebuild operations for your indexes and a SQL Server unused indexes reset, which can help you fix index defragmentation.

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Apply custom filters to SQL Server listed indexes

With SQL Sentry, you can customize filter views according to your SQL server index usage needs by applying filters using the “Edit Filter” button found at the bottom of Grid View or by right-clicking the context menu of any individual index. You can also apply filters by name of SQL Server, index, database, table, or other identifiers such as last defragmentation duration and average percent page space used. Filters applied in Grid View won’t affect the information displayed in the Overview Charts section.

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Get More on SQL Server Unused Indexes

Do you find yourself asking…

Why is SQL Server index monitoring and analysis important?
How can I get started identifying unused indexes in SQL Server?
How can I find duplicate indexes in SQL Server?
How does index analysis work in SQL Sentry?

Monitoring your SQL Server index usage and taking the time to find unused indexes in SQL Server can enable you to take charge of your SQL Server performance, organization, and resource allocation, which ultimately helps the business run more effectively. When you analyze SQL Server index usage stats, you can more easily take appropriate action against bottlenecks, latency, and space-hogging indexes.

Monitoring and analysis can also let you more easily evaluate which indexes are performing best based on value density, seeks and scans, lookups, sorting ability, and query coverage. By identifying unused indexes in SQL Server, you can more easily maintain performance by running a SQL Server unused indexes reset and running an unused SQL Server missing index report to further understand your SQL Server index usage status.

With easy-to-understand visualizations, SQL Sentry is designed to help you make smarter, more informed decisions about your SQL Server index usage and performance. These choices can help reduce data storage footprint, limit query overhead, and counter long-running SQL queries and deadlock issues to help you optimize overall SQL Server performance.

SQL Sentry is designed to show SQL Server indexes in different styles under the Indexes tab. The information displayed on these indexes can help you understand SQL Server index usage, identify unused indexes in SQL Server, and gain insight into the impact of an unused index in SQL Server.

There are a few different ways SQL Sentry can list SQL Server indexes:

Overview Charts The Overview Chart section is built to show a handful of charts displaying statistics on indexes analyzed by SQL Sentry. This cumulative SQL Server index usage report can allow you to gain a general understanding of your SQL Server index usage, including Total Fragmentation and Total Buffer Usage.
Index Grid View The Index Grid view section can help reveal various index usage statistics about individual indexes on SQL Server. You can also apply filters and order data by various columns in Index Grid view to customize how you view SQL Server index usage stats. When you select an index here, the Detail Index Chart is designed to update with information unique to the given index.
Index Tree View The Index Tree view section can display individual index statistics in a hierarchical tree format. Like the Index Grid view, you can also apply filters and edit the number of rows shown using the collapsed Filter tab. However, unlike the Index Grid view, the Detail Index Chart won’t update index information according to filters chosen on the Index Tree view.
Detail Chart The Detail Chart section contains a set of charts highlighting individual SQL Server index usage information. Some specific charts include the Index Space Usage Chart, which can tell you how much an index is on the disk and in the buffer, and the Index Activity Chart, which uses scan, seek, and lookup operations to help you identify unused indexes on SQL Server.
Filter This tab, collapsed by default, can enable you to apply, remove, and edit filters to quickly view important SQL Server index usage stats. You can filter individual indexes by SQL Server and database name, start and end time of defragmentation operations, and total number of index pages. You can also control the number of rows shown in Grid view or Tree view through the Filter section.

With these index performance views, SQL Sentry is designed to help you more easily explore individual SQL Server index usage stats and run SQL Server index usage reports to gain a better understanding of the various SQL Server indexes present in your network. These SQL Server index visualizations can also help you make more informed decisions on index strategies and how to boost SQL Server performance.

Monitoring your SQL Server index usage and taking the time to find unused indexes in SQL Server can enable you to take charge of your SQL Server performance, organization, and resource allocation, which ultimately helps the business run more effectively. When you analyze SQL Server index usage stats, you can more easily take appropriate action against bottlenecks, latency, and space-hogging indexes.
Monitoring and analysis can also let you more easily evaluate which indexes are performing best based on value density, seeks and scans, lookups, sorting ability, and query coverage. By identifying unused indexes in SQL Server, you can more easily maintain performance by running a SQL Server unused indexes reset and running an unused SQL Server missing index report to further understand your SQL Server index usage status.
With easy-to-understand visualizations, SQL Sentry is designed to help you make smarter, more informed decisions about your SQL Server index usage and performance. These choices can help reduce data storage footprint, limit query overhead, and counter long-running SQL queries and deadlock issues to help you optimize overall SQL Server performance.
While you may want to use dynamic management views (DMVs) on SQL Server to identify duplicate indexes, Missing Index DMVs may overlook some crucial information.
Some downsides to utilizing Missing Index DMVs include the following:
Limited scope
Limited capacity
Less accurate
Column order isn’t accurate
Unordered columns can make it difficult to discover duplicate indexes, so ensuring the columns are ordered can be crucial. You can do this by running a script to list indexes on a table. The script should include index ids, included columns, filtered index columns, leaf/tree details for rowstore indexes, and columns defined for columnstore indexes.
Modify sp_helpindex to include the above info, and order by index_keys and included_columns, NOT index_name. Ordering by index keys can enable you to more easily see overlapping indexes and similar index keys with overlapping included columns.
While some duplicate indexes will be redundant, others will be overlapping. Redundant indexes, which are completely identical, should be consolidated so there’s one index for a wide variety of queries. Overlapping indexes are a little trickier; if they have the same qualities in the same order, they’re overlapping, but if they have the same qualities in a different order, they aren’t overlapping and can’t be combined. By viewing columns_in_tree and columns_in_leaf, you can more easily determine whether two or more indexes are redundant duplicates or overlapping duplicate indexes. Having a SQL Server missing index report can be critical when checking these parameters.
SQL Sentry is designed to show SQL Server indexes in different styles under the Indexes tab. The information displayed on these indexes can help you understand SQL Server index usage, identify unused indexes in SQL Server, and gain insight into the impact of an unused index in SQL Server.
There are a few different ways SQL Sentry can list SQL Server indexes:
Overview Charts The Overview Chart section is built to show a handful of charts displaying statistics on indexes analyzed by SQL Sentry. This cumulative SQL Server index usage report can allow you to gain a general understanding of your SQL Server index usage, including Total Fragmentation and Total Buffer Usage.
Index Grid View The Index Grid view section can help reveal various index usage statistics about individual indexes on SQL Server. You can also apply filters and order data by various columns in Index Grid view to customize how you view SQL Server index usage stats. When you select an index here, the Detail Index Chart is designed to update with information unique to the given index.
Index Tree View The Index Tree view section can display individual index statistics in a hierarchical tree format. Like the Index Grid view, you can also apply filters and edit the number of rows shown using the collapsed Filter tab. However, unlike the Index Grid view, the Detail Index Chart won’t update index information according to filters chosen on the Index Tree view.
Detail Chart The Detail Chart section contains a set of charts highlighting individual SQL Server index usage information. Some specific charts include the Index Space Usage Chart, which can tell you how much an index is on the disk and in the buffer, and the Index Activity Chart, which uses scan, seek, and lookup operations to help you identify unused indexes on SQL Server.
Filter This tab, collapsed by default, can enable you to apply, remove, and edit filters to quickly view important SQL Server index usage stats. You can filter individual indexes by SQL Server and database name, start and end time of defragmentation operations, and total number of index pages. You can also control the number of rows shown in Grid view or Tree view through the Filter section.
With these index performance views, SQL Sentry is designed to help you more easily explore individual SQL Server index usage stats and run SQL Server index usage reports to gain a better understanding of the various SQL Server indexes present in your network. These SQL Server index visualizations can also help you make more informed decisions on index strategies and how to boost SQL Server performance.