You can’t go wrong by starting with these SQL Server performance tips, which offer DBAs and others detailed information on specific issues and ways to apply them to their environment.

1. 3 Tips
for Getting
Gold Medal
Performance From
Your SQL Server
Installation
Adapted From Work by
SQL Server Experts:
Patrick O’Keefe
Richard Douglas
SQL Server DBA Professionals
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2. Gold Medal Tip
#1: Benchmark
and Analyze
Your
Performance
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3. Establish a performance
baseline –
Talk to system
administrators, end users,
and application administers
get a feel for
usage patterns/peakperiods/off hours/average use
The more predictable your performance, the
less data you will require.
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4. Consider capacity –
How much is required to store the
data?
How will it grow over time?
Consider aggregating historical data
in intervals
Do not store measurement
repository in same location as the
database you are measuring.
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5. Limit your changes –
Test one hypothesis on each run
Rule out ineffective methods
Honing each change reveals
additional improvement
options.
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6. Repeat the measurements –
Compare original run and
changed run
Did you get the desired effect?
Have any unexpected side effects?
Objectively determine whether or not you
made progress.
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7. Establish performance
norms –
What conditions
enable perfect performance?
what scenarios hinder it?
Perform capacity planning
Extrapolate typical resource consumption
per user – predict when your system will
hit connection bottlenecks.
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8. Rule out usual suspects –
Troubleshoot problems
more effectively
Search for significant deviations
from baseline
Group related indicators
Drill down into the root cause.
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9. Gold Medal Tip
#2: Find the
Rogue Query
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10. Find workload causing the
bottleneck –
This is a lot easier to do since the
introduction of
Dynamic Management Objects
(DMOs) in SQL Server 2005
For a CPU bottleneck, the first thing is to get
top CPU consumers on the server
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11. Top CPU consumers
query –
This is a very
simple query on
sys.dm_exec_
query_stats:
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The really useful part of this query is your ability to use
cross apply and sys.dm_exec_sql_text to get the SQL
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statement, so you can analyze it.

12. I/O bottleneck –
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13. Gold Medal Tip
#3: Utilize SQL
Server Profiler
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14. SQL Server Profiler –
Profiler creates a
trace file that
captures events in SQL Server,
proving invaluable
in providing information on workload
and poorly performing queries.
View a video tutorial on SQL Server Profiler on
Toad World.
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15. Performance monitor –
Perfmon
allows you to
collect data and
correlate information on resource usage
with data on the events
being fired inside SQL Server
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Note* running Profiler requires the ALTER
TRACE permission.
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16. Here’s how…
1. Open Perfmon.
2. Prepare Data Collector Set or create a
new one. DO NOT start set yet.
3. Open Profiler.
4. Create a new trace – specify
instance, event, column, & destination
details.
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17. 5. Start the trace.
6. Switch back to Perfmon and start the
Data Collector set.
7. Leave both sessions running until
required data has been collected.
8. Stop the Profiler trace, save, and
close.
9. Switch to Perfom, stop the Data
Collector set.
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18. 10. Open the saved trace in Profiler.
11. Click File  Import Performance
Data.
12. Navigate to Data Collection File,
select performance counters of interest.
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19. You can now see the performance counters with the
Profiler trace file (figure below) – enabling much faster
resolution of bottlenecks.
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20. Extra tip –
The steps above use the client
interface… to save resources…
a server wide trace would be more
efficient.
For more details and seven other great
tips, Download our Whitepaper.
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