How to Create a Performance Baseline

  • Hi!

    I am just curious how one would create a performance baseline? I've done Google searches of how to create one, but I couldn't find any articles that could help me. Could someone please give me links or explain how I can create a performance baseline? Thank you so much in advance!

  • It's not that complicated. Take a moment in time, say now, measure your production system for a period of time, I usually try for 24 hours and do it on a week day. Ta-Da! Baseline. Now you can use this as a measuring stick a week or a month from now to say that, yes, my system is running slower.

    Measurements are whatever performance counters you decide are most appropriate. There are various lists available all over the place. Most of them are decent. I'd also suggest capturing trace data so you have a set of measures for query timing as well.

    "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

  • Thank you! But how do I use the Performance Monitor to create a numerical baseline? Do I just go through the graph and just manually average it out? I'm sorry, I'm really new to this...

  • Oh, no. You don't want to capture it to the graph. You need to set up a counter log to capture the data to a file over time. I've got a whole section in the book for how to set this up. Microsoft also has a good knowledge base article:

    http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/Perf-tun-srv.docx

    "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

  • Oh whoa! Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!! 😀

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