A must for DBA: SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard
Joint effort of SQL support and SQL development teams to help field with performance issues identification with focus on resolving the problem.
The dashboard reports are light (as compared to other tools like SQL Profiler and PSSDiag) as they rely uses SQL Server 2005 DMV thus having minimum performance impact (rather zero performance impact)
Dashboard has in build reports for most of the Common performance problems:
- Blocking
- CPU bottlenecks
- Index recommendations generated by the query optimizer – Here still I would recommend verifying the recommendation using DTA tool before applying the recommendations.
- IO bottlenecks (and what queries are performing the most IO)
- Latch contention
As usual team has documented the tool nicely in help file - perfdash.chm.
I find it interesting a typical dashboard style tool with drill through functionality and would recommend this to all DBAs. For that matter I would not be surprised If support engineer requests you to install the reports to speed the troubleshooting process especially with system running SP2.
