Monitoring Database Growth Events in SQL Server

Database growth events occur when a SQL Server database file reaches its capacity and automatically grows to accommodate more data. These events are configured in the database properties, where you can define growth increments in MB or GB. Properly configuring these settings is important for maintaining performance, as frequent auto-growth can cause fragmentation and impact disk I/O when the database files are growing.

Some DBAs take control of database growth events by using custom SQL Agent jobs to grow files in a controlled manner, avoiding the performance hit during peak usage. Additionally, enabling Instant File Initialization for data files (but not log files) can speed up growth operations by skipping the zeroing-out process, reducing delays during expansions.

Monitoring Virtual Log Files (VLFs) is also essential, as excessive VLFs caused by poorly managed log file growth can slow down operations like backups and recovery.

To track and analyze growth events effectively, use the script below. It helps you identify when and how your database files are expanding, so you can fine-tune your settings for optimal performance. This can also be a quick go-to script that will quickly help you identify which database has grown recently and caused a disk space issue.

SQL Script to Show Database Growth Events

Run the following to get database growth events –

When there are a lot of growth events in the query result I tend to copy it out into Excel and filter it. You might want to save it to a table and sum the total growth per database. Ideally, you would want to be monitoring this in a better way than querying for troubleshooting.

For more random info on SQL Server database growth events feel free to check out my older blog post: Database Growth Events in SQL Sever