High "Connections" Count

by Jul 8, 2015

Hi,

I am new to the tool so this question may be a silly one. I also inherited an existing configuration so i am not sure what is standard or no.

Most of the metircs i am seeing make sense and are in line with my previous experience using DMVs, DBArtisan, SSMS, etc.

I am having a problel understand the values i am seeing from the “Connections” metric however which are very volatile and sometimes very high.

As i speak, it is hovering around 8,000 in the OVERVIEW|DETAILS window on a largish SQL2008 R2 instance. However, at times it will spike to 50,000 or even 100,000 before going back down slowly. At the same time in the SESSION|SUMMARy window, the SESSIONS count is fairly steady at around 600.

Please help me understand what this CONNECTIONS metric is and how it is measured.

Thanks!