September 18, 2010 at 5:35 pm
I am Sr. DBA in one of the leading bank and we would like to buy MS SQL server performance diagnostic tool for our enterprise shop for MS SQL server 2000, 2005, 2008, 2008 R2.
What would you suggest? What should I be looking for the tool that is better than other tools (i.e. Idera Performance diagnostics better on xyz over quest tool etc).
Any help here would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.
September 19, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Some tools that I would recommend (which are available for free) are:
RML utilities -> 32 bit is available for download here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyId=7EDFA95A-A32F-440F-A3A8-5160C8DBE926&displaylang=en and 64 bit is available for download here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=B60CDFA3-732E-4347-9C06-2D1F1F84C342
SQL Nexus -> available on codeplex here http://sqlnexus.codeplex.com/
We've used these tools for performance diagnostics and they're pretty good.
The book Profession SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting (by Christian Bolton et al) contains a lot of good information on trobuleshooting performance with these tools (it is also a very good book for the all other information it contains and I would recommend this book regardless of whether you're using these tools or not :-))
September 20, 2010 at 9:12 am
Thanks winash.
We are using RML utilities today. I will look at the SQL nexus tool as well.
We are trying to evaluate and looking at buying performance diagnostic tool that allow us to go back in time to find out what the issue was? i.e. two days ago someone feel pain on running their batch and not reported until two days later. We like to go back to history and see what was going on the server at the time.
We have very big consolidate shop for SQL server and thus we are looking at tool with historical snapshots.
thanks again for your reply.
September 21, 2010 at 10:51 am
idera sql diagnostics manager (if you can afford it) 😉
September 21, 2010 at 11:21 am
We use SQLSentry at our company. Another worth trying tool that comes free with the RedGate SQL Bundle is SQL Response. You can download the trial version, it's free to use for 15 days.
Thanks,
Amol Naik
September 23, 2010 at 8:30 am
Thank you all who responded so far.
This is what I have
- RML Utilities
- SQL Nexus
- Idera Performance diagnostic manager
- SQL Sentry
- Red Gate SQL response
Anything else for anyone else? If you are using any of the tool, Can you also tell me what do you like about and what do you don't like or miss about it?
Thanks in advance.
September 23, 2010 at 8:36 am
i like Idera the best. however, it is very expensive.
i would settle for SQL Response, BUT, not the current version 1.3. the new beta version 2 is looking to be very promising. (they probably will charge more for it 😛 )
September 23, 2010 at 8:51 am
We have been using I3, a product from a company called Precise and it's really good.
It's able to store historical information, shows offenders, sends out alerts... It's very robust and complete.
We will be doing a POC on a Quest Analyzer tool over the next couple of weeks and I'll let you know how this goes.
September 23, 2010 at 8:58 am
Are you looking to track /monitor or solve issues? They are two different things. I work for Red Gate, and Response is more for tracking/monitoring/alerting. The SQL Sentry tool is more for tracking performance issues and diving in.
I have heard good things about the Idera tool, but haven't used it. Same for Nexus. Quest has some tools that can help as well (Foglight/Spotlight). Havne't used them on SQL, but they were nice products for Oracle / DB2. They are $$$$
September 24, 2010 at 8:38 am
We are looking at tool that tracks and keep history and allow us to dive into issue. We have current monitoring and in-house developed tool that allow us to go back about 7 days and limited way to find out what was the cause and what we should do to resolve.
But its about time where we can get professional too that allow us to track and keep history and allow us to dive into issue in past and current.
September 24, 2010 at 8:52 am
We had Spotlight for a long time from Quest Software, but they do not seem to be keeping it up to the changes with the new versions of SQL Server. Spoke with them at a SQL Saturday and they did not agree nor did they disagree.
We reviewed several tools and settled upon SQL Sentry. It has been a valuable asset.
We also tested Confio's Ignite which is also an excellent product but found SQL Sentry to be just a bit easier to use. It was actually a tough decision between the 2.
Steve Jimmo
Sr DBA
“If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under." - Ronald Reagan
September 24, 2010 at 2:34 pm
We are using SQL Sentry, IDERA Diagnostic Manager and IGNITE Confio.
Of the 3, I'm most familiar with SQL Sentry and IGNITE. SQL Sentry has been especially valuable for us in monitoring performance of our SQL Analysis Services (SSAS) server. I believe the SQL Sentry Performance Dashboard tool has even won awards for the SSAS-monitoring capability.
IDERA Diagnostic Manager now offers the capability of customizing performance monitoring by specifying perfmon counters that you want monitored from within the tool, and enabling you to watch those plotted over time (they are stored in a data warehouse).
IGNITE has literally saved us in many crisis situations and helped us to quickly identify problem queries, users etc.
See:
I don't work for IGNITE BTW, but I am wearing an IGNITE t-shirt as I am writing this, that I received from them recently... 😉
__________________________________________________________________________________
SQL Server 2016 Columnstore Index Enhancements - System Views for Disk-Based Tables[/url]
Persisting SQL Server Index-Usage Statistics with MERGE[/url]
Turbocharge Your Database Maintenance With Service Broker: Part 2[/url]
September 17, 2012 at 3:26 am
Hi there!
I was just wondering about SQL Server Performance monitoring tools but we are a very small shop, hence free would be much better!
Since two years passed since that thread, what would you recommend nowadays?
Currently, I use a simple set of server side traces to catch the "rogue" queries and, if necessary, I can also run heavier traces to catch smaller queries that happen very often (which can also hurt) as explained in the wonderfull book Inside SQL Server 2005: TSQL Querying.
To my great shame, I did buy Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting but did not read it... :crying: yet... so maybe that's what I should do!
My target environment is mostly SQL 2008 (not R2).
Cheers
Eric
September 29, 2012 at 9:59 am
Eric Mamet (9/17/2012)
Hi there!I was just wondering about SQL Server Performance monitoring tools but we are a very small shop, hence free would be much better!
Since two years passed since that thread, what would you recommend nowadays?
Currently, I use a simple set of server side traces to catch the "rogue" queries and, if necessary, I can also run heavier traces to catch smaller queries that happen very often (which can also hurt) as explained in the wonderfull book Inside SQL Server 2005: TSQL Querying.
To my great shame, I did buy Professional SQL Server 2008 Internals and Troubleshooting but did not read it... :crying: yet... so maybe that's what I should do!
My target environment is mostly SQL 2008 (not R2).
Cheers
Eric
Dynamic management views (DMVs) are your best friend, if your budget does not allow for 3rd-party tools.
This book is an excellent resource on DMVs:
"Performance Tuning with SQL Server Dynamic Management Views" by Davidson and Ford
Also check out Adam Machanic's blog series on the WhoIsActive stored procedure:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/2012/03/22/released-who-is-active-v11-11.aspx
__________________________________________________________________________________
SQL Server 2016 Columnstore Index Enhancements - System Views for Disk-Based Tables[/url]
Persisting SQL Server Index-Usage Statistics with MERGE[/url]
Turbocharge Your Database Maintenance With Service Broker: Part 2[/url]
September 30, 2012 at 1:02 am
Thx! 😀
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