What should be the best approach to identify performance problems in Production environment

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What should be the best approach to identify performance problems in Production environment

vinod.saraswat

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Points: 2395
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August 20, 2013 at 1:34 am

#297904

Hello Experts,
I need all your opinion to work on identifying performance issues by finding best tools & when to use it in Production environment.
1)performance monitor windows utility (When to use)
2)DMV's (When to use)
3)SQL Profiler (When to use)

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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RTaylor2208 SSChampion Points: 13298 More actions · Answer 1

Everyones approach is different but personally I find performance monitor is only realy helpful if you have a baseline of values for counters for when the system is performing as expected.

You can do this by capturing all the counters you feel is relevant, such as CPU utilisation, batch requests per second etc using a counter log, and then summaries the data identifying your Avg \ Max readings, this gives you something to compare to.

DMV's can be used to cover many aspects but in terms of performance analysis you can look for example at the top 10 queries by reads \ writes etc one example here:

http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2010/05/14/sql-server-find-most-expensive-queries-using-dmv/

As for profiler never use this is a production environment, if you are needing to capture traces either use the server side trace stored procedures

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc293613.aspx

or extended events (much better in SQL 2012)

http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/jonathan/converting-sql-trace-to-extended-events-in-sql-server-2012/

You should also check out the procedure sp_whoisactive by Adam Mechanic as this is very helpfull for capturing stats about currently executing queries:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/adam_machanic/archive/tags/sp_5F00_whoisactive/default.aspx

MCITP SQL 2005, MCSA SQL 2012

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 2

https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/finding-the-causes-of-poor-performance-in-sql-server,-part-1/

https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/finding-the-causes-of-poor-performance-in-sql-server,-part-2/

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

vinod.saraswat SSCrazy Points: 2395 More actions · Answer 3

Thanks to RTalor & Gail Shaw for your valuable response.

@RTalor : Can you please share the list of counters and their threshold values to have baseline for the system.

How do you analyze this data i.e.on weekly basis or monthly basis. I am curious to know about creating a baseline for the system.

Gail your links are really very helpful to have step by step analysis and action.

Thanks again in advance.

Gail Shaw SSC Guru Points: 1004504 More actions · Answer 4

vinod.saraswat (8/20/2013)
@RTalor : Can you please share the list of counters and their threshold values to have baseline for the system.
How do you analyze this data i.e.on weekly basis or monthly basis. I am curious to know about creating a baseline for the system.

Google - erin stellato baseline

Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and no one may pass