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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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top Queries DMV

I spoke at the Pacific Northwest SQL Server User Group last night, and we covered Performance tuning. I promised to blog a script that uses the "query_stats" DMV and a CROSS APPLY to find the top queries - there are lots of these on the web, so here's

SQLH2 on Codeplex

Recently someone asked me if they could get the source to SQLH2, the "health" monitoring solution for SQL Server. I told them that I couldn't give out source code, but Microsoft can. I said "make the suggestion on http://connect.microsoft.com and see

Fixed Cycle Applications

I was working with someone last night on some performance tuning and noticed that they didn't have a specific issue that was causing their system to slow down - it was a combination of things. As we were working, I found a bunch of things that were running
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