SQL Analysis Connection Test

If attempts to connect to SSAS frequently fail, it can adversely impact user experience with SSAS. Administrators should hence promptly capture such failures and rapidly determine its root-cause. This is where the SQL Analysis Connection test helps!

This test tracks connections to SSAS, and alerts administrators if these connection attempts fail frequently. The test also reports the count of connections and the number of user sessions on SSAS. In the process, the test reveals if there are sessions without active connections.

Target of the test : A Microsoft SQL Analysis Services Server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for the SSAS server being monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test Period	How often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port at which the specified Host listens.
Instance	The name of a specific SQL Analysis Services Server instance to be monitored. The default value of this parameter is “default”. However, if the Microsoft SQL Server hosting SSAS uses named instances, then do the following: Configure the Instance parameter with the name of the SQL Server instance that hosts SSAS. Do not change the default value of the Port parameter
SSAS Version	Specify the SSAS version being monitored. By default, 11 is displayed here, indicating that version 11 of SSAS is monitored by default.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Current client connections	Indicates the number of client connections currently established with the SSAS server.	Number	This is a good indicator of the current connection load on the server.
Current user sessions	Indicates the number of user sessions currently established with the SSAS server.	Number	A connection is always tied to a session. This means that typically, the value of this measure should be the same as that of the Current client connections measure. However, there could be sessions without active user connections. It is also possible for an application to create multiple sessions over the same connection. If the value of this measure is greater than that of the Current client connections measure therefore, you can conclude that it is because of one of the above reasons. If this measure reports the value 0, it means that no user is connected to the server currently. It could also mean that users are unable to connect to the server. In this case, do one of the following: Ensure that firewall is not blocking connections from client to server; Check if the SQL Browser service is started
Connection request rate	Indicates the rate at which connection requests received by the server.	Requests/Sec
Successful connection rate	Indicates the rate of successful connections to the server.	Successes/Sec	A high value is desired for this measure.
Connection failure rate	Indicates the rate of failed connections.	Failures/Sec	Ideally, the value of this measure should be 0. A high value indicates frequent connection failures. In this case, check the following: Check the TCP/IP connectivity to the server: Because SQL Server Analysis Services rely on TCP/IP for remote connectivity, it uses a combination of IP address and port number for both identification and connectivity. The IP address identifies the server in the network running the SQL Server Analysis Services instance while the port number identifies a logical connection to the specific application or service. To test TCP/IP connectivity, we can use the PING and TELNET utilities. If the PING fails, it could be owing to one of the following reasons: No physical network connectivity Firewall blocking connections from client to server ICMP echo response is prohibited for security reasons Enlist the help of network engineers to resolve this issue. Next, try to use the TELNET utility to verify connectivity to the SSAS port. If this results in the error message, "Could not open connection to the host, on port", it could mean that the Windows Firewall is blocking access to this port number. To resolve this, configure the Windows Firewall to allow access to the SSAS port. Check application connectivity: For this, use the instance name in SQL Server Management Studio when to connect to the SQL Server Analysis Services instance. f SQL Server Management Studio could not connect to the Analysis Services instance, check the error message reported. If the error message hints that the SQL browser service may not be running, then check if that service is running, and if not start the service on the SSAS server. If Analysis Services is running on a Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC), the SQL Browser service has to be started on all of the nodes of the WSFC. If the error message says that the connection has been refused on a port number different from the SSAS port (default: 2383), it could mean that, because Windows Server 2008 and higher supports IPv6, the installation of Analysis Services has configured a separate port number for IPv6. If you only want to connect to the Analysis Services instance using IPv4, we need to remove the IPv6 configuration from the Analysis Services instance. If you are dealing with a SQL Server Analysis Services instance running on a WSFC, be sure to remote the IPv6 configuration for all of the WSFC nodes.