On the piste, France.
UK Consulting Blogs
You can determine the formatted sector size of the database using DBCC FILEHEADER ('<dbname>'). The DBCC command actually returns quite a lot of information but we are only interested in the sector size column.
In case you were wondering, Longhorn & Vista will only support SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. This should be out as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) build sometime soon (I'll blog about the forthcoming changes once we have publicly announced the CTP details). A more detailed explanation on SQL Support for Longhorn & Vista is posted here: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/sqlonvista.mspx
Well, not what I'd call a big update to MPS reports but still worth noting if you intend gathering diagnostic data for a 64-Bit environment.
The download page for MPS report has been updated (following a recent discovery on a x64 PoC) to reflect that some of the MPS tool variants support 64-Bit e.g. the MPS report tool for SQL Server. The important notes section previously stated that the tools do not support 64-Bit. Refer to the important notes section listed here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=CEBF3C7C-7CA5-408F-88B7-F9C79B7306C0&displaylang=en "Not all MPSReport versions are currently supported to run on 64bit Operating system versions. Please view associated readme.txt for specifics".
The PFE variant also fully supports a 64-bit environment http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=00ad0eac-720f-4441-9ef6-ea9f657b5c2f&displaylang=en
Only just seen this via the SQL Server Storage blog here http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2006/10/06/SQLIOSim-available-for-download.aspx
SQLIOSim certainly looks interesting and seems a step beyond sqliostress.
Is now available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=818234dc-a17b-4f09-b282-c6830fead499&DisplayLang=en