do server traces consume much resources?

  • i want to run the blocked process report as part of a background sever trace, so that when users report blocking, i can confirm that there was blocking and how long it was for ( just to see if the problem is actually blocking and not network issues/user issues).

    how do i find out how much resources a backend server trace uses? is it much lighter than running profiler? will it have much impact at all?

  • Much lighter than profiler. Make sure that the trace is writing to a fast drive that does not contain your database's data or log files or tempdb.

    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
  • anyway i can work out cold hard numbers or have more concrete evidence of how easy server traces are on resources? i need to be able to justify it to the team before it can be implemented into production.

  • Take a test server, take baseline readings of the CPU usage, IO usage, etc. Implement some traces, take new readings.

    If you're running SQL 2005, you already have a serverside trace running constantly, the default trace.

    Providing you're not tracing very frequent events (lock aquired, stmt_completed, etc) you shouldn't notice much change.

    If it makes the team feel any better, profiler uses the same trace procedures that the server-side trace does, but then forces the event data to be sent over a network and to wait for the client machine to display them, whereas the serverside trace just writes the data to file

    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
  • great. thanks for all your help Gail.

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