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Thursday, November 19, 2009 7:17 AM

Using Perfmon with SQL Server – Part Two

Yesterday I posted a header from a script that shows you some links for how to use “Logman”, a Windows command-line utility that can automate your collection of Windows Performance Monitor counters. Towards the bottom, you can see the logman command I
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 8:34 AM

Using Perfmon with SQL Server – Part One

I held a workshop on performance tuning in Portland, Oregon yesterday, and as part of that I mentioned a process I follow for automatically collecting Performance Monitor Counters for a system. I use this data to store a baseline and then subsequently
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 7:03 AM

Channeling Bruce Lee: Tuning without Tuning

I’m leading a Performance Tuning workshop here in Portland, Oregon today, and I normally start this kind of workshop with a segment on “pre-tuning” – or, the steps you take so that you don’t have to tune as much later. When we set up a system is the greatest
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 04, 2009 8:04 AM

Find and learn DMVs

This morning I showed how I find DMVs, and find out how to use them. First, I just run this query:   USE MASTER; GO SELECT ‘sys.’ + name FROM sys.sysobjects WHERE name LIKE ‘dm%’   Then I copy and paste a result into the “Index” panel of Books
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 6:11 AM

Remember to include the Standard Deviation

I do a lot of performance analysis on SQL Server Instances, and I normally start with a series of Performance Counters from both Windows and SQL Server. This gives me the ability to limit what I need to look at by seeing which Hardware and Windows components
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 7:20 AM

Speaking Schedule for October 2009

I’ll be speaking at two of the “SQL Saturday” Events in the next month. The first is here in my own back-yard, in Redmond, Washington. I’ll be demonstrating the Resource Governor with simple, easy-to-follow examples, and I’ll even show you how to monitor
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 6:24 AM

Opening a Windows Perfmon File in Profiler – Part Two

In a previous blog entry , I mentioned you could import a Windows Perfmon log into SQL Server Profiler. I received a note that someone was having a problem doing this, and when we looked over his situation, it turned out that he was using a Windows Perfmon
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Monday, September 14, 2009 7:14 AM

Using Perfmon Data in Profiler

In SQL Server 2005 a great new feature was introduced into SQL Server Profiler – the ability to import Perfmon data. If you’re not familiar with one or both of those tools, SQL Server Profiler is a package included with SQL Server that can “watch” your
Posted by Buck Woody | 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:32 AM

SQL Server Best Practices: Auto-Create and Auto-Update Statistics Should Be On - Most of the Time

SQL Server uses something called the "Query Optimizer" to find the data you're looking for. To do that, there is another mechanism, called "Statistics", which can be created and maintained on columns in a table - even tables that don't have an Index.
Posted by Buck Woody | 3 Comments
Thursday, June 11, 2009 7:46 AM

SQL Server Best Practices: File Layouts (Revisited)

In a previous "SQL Server Best Practice" post , I made reference to file layouts and where various file types should go. I got a comment there that I felt deserved another post. The question was: "...7 individual drives? If this is correct do you also
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Monday, June 08, 2009 7:32 AM

Performance Tuning using SQL Server 2008 from SQL Saturday 12

I had a great time in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, where I spoke on using the new features in SQL Server 2008 for Performance Tuning. We covered the new Performance Tracking and Tuning tools in the product, but I focused more on the process for performance
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Tuesday, June 02, 2009 7:44 AM

The Simplest (and at the same time, most difficult) Performance Tuning Tip Ev-ar

If you could only change one thing to make a database system faster, what would that be? More memory, faster drives? Better queries, more indexes? Less indexes? Well, I'd spend my one "database wish" here: Don't get what you don't need. I'm constantly
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 8:45 AM

Back to basics - Using another Default Filegroup

SQL Server uses the file system on a computer, just like all database platforms. Whenever you create a database, there are always at least two files that are created - one for the data (MDF files) and another for the logging function (LDF files). But
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 02, 2009 8:47 AM

Software Alert: ClearTrace

I ran across this package today: http://www.cleardata.biz/cleartrace/default.aspx I'm playing with it now. It basically reads a SQL Server Trace file and shows you the longer running processes so you can do more performance tuning. It's a freebie, and
Posted by Buck Woody | 2 Comments
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 8:39 AM

The Effect of Hardware on SQL Server Performance

Many DBAs begin to tune a poorly performing database system at the hardware level. This is not always the best idea - most of the issues I've found in performance are in code, not in hardware components. For instance, if you add a good index, the system
Posted by Buck Woody | 1 Comments
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