The Instances tab provides a broad visibility of your environment. IDERA SQL Inventory Manager displays in this section all available instances in the following views:

• MANAGED BY INSTANCES - Instances you have registered with SQL Inventory Manager.
• MANAGED BY HOST SERVER - A hierarchical view of the host servers and instances you have registered with SQL Inventory Manager.
• SQL LICENSING BY INSTANCES - Helpful information about your registered instances to help you determine your SQL Server licensing requirements.
• SQL LICENSING BY SERVER - Helpful information about your registered servers to help you determine your SQL Server licensing requirements.
• DECOMMISSIONED INSTANCES - Instances decommissioned in SQL Inventory Manager.
• DISCOVERED INSTANCES - Instances discovered by SQL Inventory Manager and not registered yet.
• IGNORED INSTANCES - Instances you have chosen not to manage with SQL Inventory Manager.

Filtering and Sorting

Sorting

The instances views allow sorting data by one column data. To sort the listed instances, expand the dropdown menu next to the column name you want to use as sorting criteria and select either Sort Ascending or Sort Descending.

Alternatively click a column name to sort either in ascending or descending order.

Filtering

Quick Filtering

You can find the quick filtering options on the left side of the Instances view. These options will help you get a quick view of your required instances; for example, if you want to see your managed instances filtered by a specific Owner, just choose the respective option from the Owner filter.

Creating a useful filter to "weed out" unnecessary information takes time but is important when managing large environments. As a result, you may want to save that filter for future use. SQL Inventory Manager now allows you to save filters for use in the Explorer and Instances views. Simply create the filter, and then click Save favorite, depending on which view you are in when creating the filter. To use that filter, click Load favorite.

You can enable or disable the option Apply filter as it changes depending if you want to see the changes as you apply the filter, or if you prefer to select your filters first and see the results when you finish.

Advanced Filtering

The Advanced Filter option on the actions bar allow you to create, save, and apply advanced filters. The advanced filtering options use both the criteria on the quick filters and all the available data column to create custom filters.

To create an advanced filter click Advanced Filter and select Create Filter.

Choose a Custom Filter Name.

From the first drop down menu you can choose your new filter by SQL Server Name, SQL Version, SQL Edition, # of DBs, Owner, Supported, and Supported Status.

The second drop down menu sorts options such as Equals,  >=, <=, or Contains, according to your previous choice.

After you finish creating your custom filter you have the options of Apply Filters without Saving, Save and Filter, and Cancel.

You can create more than one filter at a time.