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    Version 2026.3

    Last updated: September 2, 2026

    DB24 Release Notes - Version 2026.3

    Release Date: Sep 17, 2026

    This release introduces Availability Group awareness, AiQ Badges, a new Performance Overview, and server-level memory insights, alongside meaningful improvements to Portal navigation, maintenance visibility, and backup reliability.

    Key updates:

    • AG Aware — full Availability Group topology, sync health, alerting, and AG-aware backup reporting
    • AiQ Badges with Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers for both instances and environments
    • Custom instance display names and free-text search across the Portal
    • New Performance Overview covering CPU, memory, I/O, waits, blocked sessions, and network at a glance
    • Server-level memory insights in addition to existing per-database memory usage
    • LDAP and instance connection configuration now available directly in the Portal UI
    • Improved maintenance and backup visibility with JobWatchdog, aggregated summaries, and skip logging

    🌟 Spotlight: High Availability & Insight

    DB24 2026.3 is about seeing more — across your high availability topology, your performance metrics, and the maintenance work DB24 performs on your behalf.

    AG Aware brings Availability Groups into DB24 as first-class citizens, with topology, sync state, listener health, alerting, and AG-aware backup reporting. AiQ Badges turn scores into a status you can chase and report on. The new Performance Overview puts the key metrics for an instance on a single screen. And a broad set of logging improvements means you can tell at a glance what a maintenance run actually did — and why it stopped if it didn't finish.

    This release helps you:

    • Monitor Availability Groups without stitching together information from individual replicas
    • Communicate estate health upwards with a simple, recognisable status tier
    • Assess instance performance from one screen instead of several
    • Understand what happened during maintenance and backup runs without digging through logs
    • Configure authentication and connection settings from the Portal rather than the database

    ➡️ New Features

    Datastore – AG Aware

    • DB24 now collects the full current state of every Availability Group its monitored instances participate in — group configuration, replicas, databases, listeners, and listener IP addresses
    • Reports from multiple nodes are consolidated into a single view per AG
    • A new AG canvas in the Portal shows topology, sync state, queues, and listener health
    • Alerts are raised when an AG isn't behaving as expected — for example a database that has stopped synchronising, a disconnected replica, or a non-conformant listener
    • The Backup Status report is now AG aware: a database backed up on another replica is no longer reported as missing a backup, and a new column shows which replica took it

    Datastore – AiQ Badges for Instances and Environments

    • New Bronze, Silver, and Gold status tiers derived from AiQ scores
    • Instance Badges give DBAs a clear, chase-able status for individual instances
    • Environment Badges provide a management-level overview across the entire estate
    • Badges are surfaced throughout the Portal and in notifications

    Portal – New Performance Overview and Refactored Metrics Views

    • New Performance Overview for SQL instances, giving an at-a-glance view of CPU, memory, I/O, waits, blocked sessions, and network transactions
    • Performance metrics have been refactored into a tabbed layout for easier navigation between views

    Portal – Server-Level Memory Usage Insights

    • New visibility into overall server memory consumption and how much of it SQL Server is using — previously only per-database memory usage was available
    • This server-level data is faster to collect and is now also used across several other Portal views for improved performance

    Portal – LDAP Authentication Configuration UI

    • A new Authentication section in Portal Settings lets you configure LDAP directly in the Portal
    • Completes the Active Directory login integration introduced in 2026.2, which previously required configuration in the DB24_MAC database

    Portal – Instance Connection Details UI

    • New UI for configuring how the Datastore connects to Runtimes during data collection
    • Gives you direct control over instance connection settings from the Portal

    Portal – Custom Instance Display Names

    • SQL instances can now be given a friendly display name in the Portal (e.g. SQL-PROD-01 instead of an IP address)
    • Set under Instance Settings — connection details are unaffected

    Portal – View and Export Notifications and Briefs

    • Notifications and Briefs can now be viewed directly in the Portal
    • Both can be exported to a file for sharing or record-keeping

    Portal – Warnings for Outdated Patch Advisory Data

    • Patch Advisory now warns you when its data may be out of date
    • Alerts are shown if Builds & Patches haven't synced recently, or if you're running SQL Server versions not yet covered by Builds & Patches
    • Includes a hint to run a Central Sync

    Portal – AiQ Recommendation Transparency and Search

    • Free-text search across AiQ recommendations makes it faster to find a specific recommendation
    • Advanced users can now view the underlying SQL queries used to calculate each AiQ score directly in the Recommendations view, giving greater transparency into how scores (0–10) are determined

    Portal – Navigation and Usability Improvements

    • Datagrids now support free-text search for quicker filtering
    • Grouped datagrids are more compact — grouped fields no longer occupy their own column; the first visible column is the first non-grouped field, nested beneath its group
    • Duplicate navigation components have been replaced with submenu items directly in the drawer for cleaner, more consistent navigation
    • InfoModals have been restyled with a more compact layout and a new tree-view table of contents, and coverage has been extended to areas that were previously missing them

    Portal – Clearer Messaging for Databases with No Recorded Activity

    • Database Engagement Insight no longer shows a confusing "-1" for databases with no recorded activity
    • The view now shows how many days the instance has been monitored and clearly highlights that no activity has been recorded for that database

    Runtime – Maintenance Job Logging and Visibility

    • Maintenance jobs now write a concise, aggregated summary on completion — including duration, work performed, and whether the job exited early (for example due to maintenance window limits)
    • Jobs that are stopped or skipped for exceeding the allowed maintenance window or a configured disk space threshold are now logged
    • Makes it much easier to see what happened during a maintenance run, and why a job didn't complete as expected, without reading through detailed logs

    Runtime – JobWatchdog

    • New JobWatchdog capability as part of DB24 Housekeeping
    • Configurable maximum run durations can be defined per DB24 job, allowing abnormally long-running jobs to be detected and flagged

    Runtime – Consolidated Statistics Maintenance

    • Multiple statistics maintenance jobs have been consolidated into a single job
    • Statistics collection has been moved out of the GoodNight job into this new consolidated job
    • Reduces job clutter and simplifies statistics maintenance scheduling

    Runtime – Backup Reliability and Visibility

    • DB24 now handles the FULL vs. DIFF backup decision for small databases itself, giving better control over retention and cleaner removal of old backup media
    • When a missed or failed backup is automatically rescheduled and retried, a success entry is now logged once it completes
    • A new error log filter detects backup write failures, including backups failing due to insufficient disk space on the backup device

    Installer – Portal API Login Renamed to db24_api

    • The SQL login used by the Portal API has been renamed from the generic portal to db24_api
    • Reduces the risk of naming conflicts with existing logins on the server

    Platform – Upgraded to .NET 10 (LTS)

    • The Portal API has been upgraded to .NET 10 (LTS), with all related packages updated to their latest compatible versions
    • The installer now targets the .NET 10 (LTS) runtime, keeping it aligned with the rest of the platform

    🐞 Bug Fixes

    Datastore – Connection Strings for Instances with Spaces in the Name

    • Fixed an issue where instance names containing spaces could produce invalid connection strings
    • Whitespace is now handled correctly, ensuring reliable connectivity for these instances

    Runtime – Disk Space Check in Statistics Maintenance

    • Fixed a bug where a threshold violation on an earlier volume could be masked by a later volume that passed, allowing maintenance to run even though disk space thresholds had been exceeded
    • The check now accounts for all volumes, not just the last one

    Runtime – Index Maintenance on Indexes with Page Locks Disabled

    • Fixed repeated index maintenance failures on indexes with ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = OFF, which cannot be reorganized
    • Affected indexes are now handled correctly

    Runtime and Worker – Regional Date Format Handling

    • Fixed a Worker Delta Sync failure that could occur on certain regional date settings
    • Added safeguards to the user roles and permissions collection so it works correctly across a wider range of regional date settings

    Runtime – False CHECKDB Error Logging

    • Fixed an issue where CHECKDB results reporting 0 errors were still logged as errors
    • Log entries can now be excluded by pattern, with CHECKDB messages reporting 0 allocation and 0 consistency errors excluded by default

    🧭 Summary

    DB24 2026.3 is a visibility-focused release that deepens what DB24 sees and how clearly it reports it.

    With Availability Group awareness, AiQ Badges, a new Performance Overview, server-level memory insights, and a broad set of maintenance and backup logging improvements, the High Availability & Insight Update gives both DBAs and management a clearer picture of the estate — alongside Portal configuration UIs, navigation refinements, and a solid set of reliability fixes.