Use the Cpu Per Hour alert in Mini DBA to monitor Azure SQL Database instances and make this condition visible before it becomes a wider database incident.
Mini DBA describes this alert as: Cpu Seconds Use Per Hour The MaxThreshold represents the CPU usage per hour, in seconds that will trigger the alarm
This alert highlights sustained CPU pressure. CPU saturation usually means queries, background tasks, or host contention are competing for scheduler time and can cause broad latency across the monitored workload.
Enable it once the instance has a normal workload baseline. It is especially useful on busy OLTP, reporting, and integration systems where resource pressure can quickly become user-visible.
Threshold meaning: CPU usage per hour, in seconds. Major threshold: 2000 seconds. Comparison direction: "over". Use higher thresholds on batch-heavy, development, or intentionally bursty systems where brief pressure is expected. Use lower thresholds on latency-sensitive production systems, small instances with little headroom, and services with strict recovery or availability commitments.
Find the top CPU queries, jobs, and host processes. Review recent deployments and plan changes, then tune indexes or queries, adjust schedules, reduce concurrency, or increase compute where the workload is legitimately larger than the instance can handle.
If this alert is noisy, check whether the workload naturally has short bursts. Raise the duration or threshold for expected batch windows, but keep a lower route for production systems where user-facing latency matters. Avoid simply disabling the alert until you know whether the noise is caused by threshold choice or by a real capacity trend.