In my first post on Xperf , I described the simple 4.4MB download necessary to install the Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA) & the other tools which comprise the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT), including Xperf. I was surprised to learn that...

Say It Ain’t So! In my first post on Xperf , I described the simple 4.4MB download necessary to install the Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA) & the other tools which comprise the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT), including Xperf. I was surprised...

Rendezvous With Destiny Forty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan aka Ronaldus Magnus spoke to Americans of our rendezvous with destiny . In a few short days the SQL Community will rendezvous in Seattle for the PASS 2009 Summit . This time last year,...

New! Improved! v.3.3.0 Now Available on CodePlex ! Preamble SQLIOSim Parser shreds the results of SQLIOSim.log.xml in seconds, allowing easier & more accurate interpretation of the output of SQLIOSim. SQLIOSim is a tool written by CSS Engineer...

Yesterday I flew to Minneapolis to speak at PASS MN on disk partition alignment . I left for the airport immediately afterward to get home to Indianapolis in order to speak at Perpetual Technologies, Inc. ( PTI ) 2nd Annual Back to School with Microsoft...

Greetings, my current colleague & former MVP Lara Rubbelke ( blog | twitter ) was gracious enough to invite me to speak this week at PASS Minnesota aka PASS MN . I’ll be reprising my spiel on Disk Partition Alignment , the Best Kept Secret in SQL...

I’ve been aware of the buzz around xPerf for quite some time.  I flagged emails from Microsoft Premier Field Engineers Clint Huffman (author of PAL ) & Shane Creamer (author of Vital Signs ) who in internal DLs both cited the tool way back in...

A two-part tale in which your humble correspondent interrogates databases & Very Smart Persons (VSPs), & is forced to kick his ass- umptions regarding a popular DMF. Executive Summary Documentation for the DMF sys.dm_db_index_operational_stats...

Data Compression: Strategy, Capacity Planning and Best Practices Hot off the presses, the SQL CAT team has just published a new whitepaper for which I had the opportunity to provide a technical review. The author is SQL CAT best practices maven Sanjay...

SQL IT Operations Excellence IP Architect, colleague, & friend Ward Pond tagged me in a meme started by Chris Shaw (aka SQLShaw who originally tagged a whole lot of geeks including Thomas LaRock aka SQLRockster formerly SQLBatman (R.I.P.) & still...

If you’re reading this, you survived last week’s Google glitch. Learn more here about the events of Thursday morning, May 14, 2009: Frustration, distress over Google outage Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle For the record, I interrogated...

Preamble I had the opportunity to perform a tech review of a very cool article by Benjamin Wright-Jones : Initializing a Transactional Replication Subscriber from an Array-Based Snapshot The array of geekly luminaries who contributed include...

I recently collaborated with Microsoft PFE Daniel Janik to create a template to make the case for disk partition alignment. Perhaps your customers or stakeholders within your organization can benefit. This work was recently broadcast throughout PFE DLs...

J.D. Meier is a Principal Program Manager for Microsoft’s Patterns & Practices team.  He’s a great writer & a clear thinker.  J.D.’s Sources of Insight is devoted to getting results & balancing life. His latest-&-greatest publication...

Wait stats rock. As I shared recently with friends, when it comes to SQL Server performance, wait stats are the #1 arrow in my quiver, the first tool out of my toolbox, the Vera of guns (see the Firefly episode Our Mrs. Reynolds to divine that reference...

Preamble For those of you who are already facile with SQL Server wait stats, there’s nothing new here. However, if you’re a n00b, this is a great place to start. History As I commented here on SQL MVP Jason Massie’s blog , I first became aware of the...

A few weeks ago Cindy Gross brought this tweet to my attention from SQL Server MVP Jason Massie : statisticsio : I should pdf the essential posts from @ aspiringgeek and sqlcat because everytime I really need them blogs.msdn.com is crawling. http...

The long-awaited SQL Server 2008 SP1 was just released, available at an Internet near you right NOW : SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 The SP includes CUs 1, 2, & 3 (not 4), including “Key improvements in SP1 include Slipstream, Service Pack...

In my role with MS IT's Assessment, Consulting, & Engineering ( A.C.E. ) team, I work with some of the best application perf engineers in the world. However, A.C.E. doesn't have a monopoly on talent; there are some great engineers throughout Microsoft...

This is a follow-up to last week's post in which I shared the fantastic perf enhancements in the latest-&-greatest Outlook 2007 Cumulative Update / HotFix. My post prompted a reply from Will Kennedy, Microsoft Corporate VP of Outlook & InfoPath...

SAN Over-Subscription There are a variety of challenges related to I/O performance. One common problem is "SAN Over-Subscription", which is characterized by the the following symptoms: High disk latency and Low IOPs & Throughput As MS...

Today Kevin Kline, Quest's #1 SQL guru, tagged me, challenging me to offer bits of wisdom to SQL n00bs—which I mean in a good way considering this describes me not all that many years ago. As I divine the lineage of the "Things You Know Now" thread, Mike...

It's a beautiful day. For years now the been hurry-up-&-wait icon has plagued our productivity; the whirling dervish demon of delay has been ubiquitous. This is in part a personal productivity blog, & I'm thrilled to bring you some great news...

My multi-talented, java-enabled yet Windows-empowered friend Alik Levin of www.practicethis.com ( among other blogs ) subjected my blog to the machinations of www.wordle.net . Wordle creates "word clouds". Another friend, Bob "Roudy Bob" Roudebush...

I'm a lucky guy. Besides the fact that I'm healthy, alive, & living on the planet earth "in interesting times" as the fortune cookie says, I had the opportunity to contribute to an article which appeared in the Green IT issue of The Architecture Journal...