Learningcomputer.com SQL Server 2008 – Profiling and Monitoring Tools

Reasons to Monitor Troubleshoot problems, failed maintenance jobs and isolate bottlenecks Improve SQL Server performance and response time of your queries and reports Establish baseline performance for load testing Proactively look for problem areas if you are the DBA or responsible for the server

Monitoring Tools in SQL Server Windows Task Manager Event Viewer Performance Monitor SQL Server Canned reports (server or database) Activity Monitor (SQL Server and Job) Logs (SQL Server and SQL Server Agent) TSQL And DMV (Dynamic Management Views) SQL Server Profiler (Favorite)

Windows Tools Task Manager Quickest way to find information on CPU and Memory Performance tab gives a good visual of resources Processes and Application tabs highlight all the running programs Event Viewer Can be found under Administrative Tools (Control Panel) Application tab gives you information on SQL Server Errors Security tab has information on Failure Audits Demo

Performance Monitor Performance Monitor lets you get graphical information on system counters You can get real time data or from log files In Vista, Resource Overview gives you real time data on CPU, Disk, Network Charts can be Line, Histogram or Report You can add multiple physical counters to gather tons of information, some of these are specific to SQL Server We will take a look at handful of important counters next

Performance Counters – Continued CPU Processor:% Processor Time – Percent of CPU being utilized < 50% MEMORY Available MBytes - Memory available to new processes, More is better Pages/sec - Tells you how many times Virtual memory is being accessed DISK % Disk Time – Similar to Processor Time > 90% is bad Avg.Disk Queue Length – Shows # of I/O operations waiting >2 is bad SQL Server SQLServer:Access Methods - Full Scans / sec >1 or 2 is bad SQL Server:Buffer Manager - Buffer cache hit ratio (Using cache) > 90 SQL Server:Locks - Average Wait Time, should be low

Canned Report Server Level Server Dashboard Activity - All Sessions Performance – Top queries by average CPU Database Level Disk usage by Top tables All Transactions Demo

Activity Monitor Where is it???? Took me a little bit to find this one RMB on Server, select Activity Monitor New look is broken down by Resource Area + Filtering Overview section: Graphs and Charts on system resources Processes Section: Information on SPIDs. If you right click, you can kill the process or launch Profiler directly Resource Waits: Wait info on CPU, I/O, Memory Data File I/O Recent Expensive Queries – favorite section

Error Logs(SQL Server and SS Agent) General information on SQL Server activity Both logs share the same GUI You can filter by user, computer, date, source and message One current and a number of Archive Logs Archived every time the service is restarted File Location for logs is C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Log\ Demo

TSQL And DMV’s TSQL Sp_who2 and Sp_lock DBCC_INPUTBUFFER DMV DMV’s are dynamic management views return server state that can be used to monitor the health of a server instance select * from sys.dm_os_sys_info has system level info select * from sys.dm_os_performance_counters will let you get information on the performance counters More information can be found at Demo

Profiler SQL Server Profiler is a graphical user interface to SQL Trace for monitoring an instance of the Database Engine You can capture and save data about each event to a file or table to analyze later You can add Events class which is a type of event that can be traced e.g. Showplan XML You can add a data column which is an attribute of an event classes captured in the trace e.g. Duration in milliseconds Save the trace to a file or table You can use Out of the box templates or customize them

Profiler – Continued Demo Scenario I have created a user template called Kash_template that I will use for the demo We are looking for slow queries (duration > 100) in AdventureWorks2008 database I have setup two sessions to mimic activity: One inserts data into SALES.CUSTOMER_ALL table and then updates it using a loop The other one just browses data from SALES.CUSTOMER_ALL table using a loop Both use the WAITFOR delay option