about Life time expectency

  • I saved values about Life time expectency every night.

    By this :

    SELECT @@servername AS INSTANCE

    ,[object_name]

    ,[counter_name]

    , UPTIME_MIN = CASE WHEN[counter_name]= 'Page life expectancy'

    THEN (SELECT DATEDIFF(MI, MAX(login_time),GETDATE())

    FROM master.sys.sysprocesses

    WHERE cmd='LAZY WRITER')

    ELSE ''

    END

    , [cntr_value] AS PLE_SECS

    ,[cntr_value]/ 60 AS PLE_MINS

    ,[cntr_value]/ 3600 AS PLE_HOURS

    ,[cntr_value]/ 86400 AS PLE_DAYS

    ,Getdate() as InfoDate

    FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters

    WHERE [object_name] LIKE '%Manager%'

    AND[counter_name] = 'Page life expectancy'

    But I cant interprated it . (I will read the book that you advice : Accidental_DBA_EBook)

    Befor that these are the results :

    some values are not in range : (Fields : [cntr_value] AS PLE_SECS) such as 51 and 164 and ... and the day after came back to range .

    7148----------- 2015-03-25 10:00:00.290

    665----------- 2015-03-26 10:00:01.183

    6511----------- 2015-03-27 10:00:00.770

    164----------- 2015-03-28 10:00:00.407

    2240----------- 2015-03-29 10:00:00.350

    51----------- 2015-03-30 10:00:00.827

    1886----------- 2015-03-31 10:00:00.787

    9643----------- 2015-04-01 10:00:00.157

    31308----------- 2015-04-02 10:00:00.140

    6474----------- 2015-04-03 10:00:00.910

    1179----------- 2015-04-04 10:00:00.753

    406----------- 2015-04-05 10:00:00.750

    1593----------- 2015-04-06 10:00:00.230

    541----------- 2015-04-07 10:00:01.273

    3924----------- 2015-04-08 10:00:00.543

    4808----------- 2015-04-09 10:00:00.720

    5060----------- 2015-04-10 10:00:00.253

    5375----------- 2015-04-11 10:00:01.110

    2617----------- 2015-04-12 10:00:00.203

    14251----------- 2015-04-13 10:00:00.543

    7595----------- 2015-04-14 10:00:00.227

    93996----------- 2015-04-15 10:00:00.603

    whats the meaning of these ?

  • At that granularity, not all that much. You need to have much more granular data to be able to see trends and behaviors. I prefer to have no more than 30 minute intervals.

    And yes, you should read the accidental DBA book as this counter is discussed in Chapter 1 and, I think, chapter 4.

    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
  • Also, it's really important that you don't attach massive significance to a single counter. Page Life Expectancy (PLE) is a decent measure of the behavior of some aspects of memory management within a system. But, it's largely looking at that system and that system only over time that gives PLE any meaning. You can't really compare one systems's PLE with another. And, just because PLE is low/high in a system doesn't mean you don't have/have performance issues, even ones related to memory. You have to look at a broader scope of metrics and then compare them to each other, and compare them to themselves over time. That's what monitoring is all about.

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
    SQL Server Execution Plans
    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

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