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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 reportsEstablish baseline performance for load

testingProactively look for problem areas if you

are the DBA or responsible for the server

Monitoring Tools in SQL ServerWindows

Task Manager Event ViewerPerformance 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 ToolsTask Manager

Quickest way to find information on CPU and MemoryPerformance tab gives a good visual of resourcesProcesses and Application tabs highlight all the

running programsEvent Viewer

Can be found under Administrative Tools (Control Panel)

Application tab gives you information on SQL Server Errors

Security tab has information on Failure AuditsDemo

Performance MonitorPerformance Monitor lets you get graphical

information on system countersYou can get real time data or from log filesIn 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 badAvg.Disk Queue Length – Shows # of I/O operations waiting >2 is

bad SQL Server

SQLServer:Access Methods - Full Scans / sec >1 or 2 is badSQL Server:Buffer Manager - Buffer cache hit ratio (Using cache) >

90 SQL Server:Locks - Average Wait Time, should be low

Canned Report Server Level

Server DashboardActivity - All SessionsPerformance – Top queries by average CPU

Database LevelDisk usage by Top tablesAll Transactions

Demo

Activity Monitor Where is it???? Took me a little bit to find this oneRMB on Server, select Activity MonitorNew look is broken down by Resource Area +

FilteringOverview section: Graphs and Charts on system

resourcesProcesses 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, MemoryData File I/ORecent Expensive Queries – favorite section

Error Logs(SQL Server and SS Agent)General information on SQL Server activityBoth logs share the same GUIYou can filter by user, computer, date,

source and message One current and a number of Archive LogsArchived every time the service is restartedFile Location for logs is

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\Log\

Demo

TSQL And DMV’sTSQL

Sp_who2 and Sp_lockDBCC_INPUTBUFFER

DMVDMV’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 infoselect * from sys.dm_os_performance_counters will let

you get information on the performance countersMore information can be found at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176083.aspx

Demo

ProfilerSQL 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 tableYou can use Out of the box templates or customize

them

Profiler – ContinuedDemo ScenarioI have created a user template called

Kash_template that I will use for the demoWe 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