Grafana Cloud has introduced a dedicated integration for Microsoft SQL Server, enabling users to monitor SQL Server performance effectively by utilizing metrics from the open-source sql_exporter project embedded into the Grafana Agent. This integration facilitates easy collection of metrics and logs, requiring users to first have a Grafana Cloud account and then install the integration to configure the Grafana Agent. Once set up, users gain access to two prebuilt dashboards and several alerts designed to monitor various aspects of SQL Server performance, such as connection counts, deadlocks, severe errors, and memory usage. The dashboards offer both an overview and detailed insights into pagefile behavior, which is crucial for identifying memory resource issues. Alerts are preset but customizable, monitoring metrics like deadlocks, read and write stall times, which are critical for maintaining optimal database performance. This integration aims to streamline SQL Server monitoring, offering a user-friendly setup and a robust set of tools to ensure smooth database operations.