This is a performance tuning post that's been on my to-do list for quite a while. Wait stats analysis is a great way of looking at the symptoms of performance problems (see my Wait Stats category for more posts on this) but using the sys.dm_os_wait_stats DMV shows everything that's happening on a server. If you [...]
Paul S. Randal
In Recovery...
Capturing wait stats for a single operation
Posted on: July 11, 2011 9:00 am
How to download a sqlservr.pdb symbol file
Posted on: April 13, 2011 4:03 am
I just had to figure out how to do this so I figured a quick blog post is in order to save other people time in future. If you ever need to use windbg to debug a SQL Server crash dump, or you want to capture call stacks using extended events (e.g. when debugging excessive [...]
Tracking expensive queries with extended events in SQL 2008
Posted on: October 15, 2009 4:13 pm
As part of the 2008 DBA class we're teaching down here in Melbourne, I did a demo of using predicates and file targets with extended events, so I want to blog the script for people to play with. For background info on extended events see: My TechNet Magazine article from 2008: Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended [...]
Getting historical deadlock info using extended events
Posted on: February 23, 2009 1:49 pm
In the TechNet Magazine article I wrote on Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended Events, I mentioned the always-on event session called system_health. Jonathan Kehayias, a fellow MVP and blogging mad-man, posted a great article with SQL Server Central today about how to get historical deadlock graph info from it. His article explains some of the pre-reqs [...]
New whitepaper on tuning Change Data Capture performance
Posted on: February 15, 2009 2:12 pm
Microsoft’s Steffen Krause has written an excellent whitepaper on Tuning the Performance of Change Data Capture in SQL Server 2008, that I technically reviewed, and it was published late last year. To get an overview of Change Data Capture (CDC) before reading the whitepaper, see the TechNet Magazine article I wrote for the November issue, [...]
TechNet Magazine: feature article on Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended Events
Posted on: December 5, 2008 6:31 am
The January 2009 issue of TechNet Magazine is now available on the web and has a new article I wrote on Advanced Troubleshooting with Extended Events in SQL Server 2008. The article covers: An overview of troubleshooting in SQL Server, along with links to a bunch of tools like DMVStats and RML An overview of [...]
TechNet Radio interview with Paul and Kimberly on SQL Server 2008 – Part 2
Posted on: March 11, 2008 11:45 pm
The second part of our radio interview with TechNet has been released (see here for part 1). In this installment we discuss troubleshooting and manageability in SQL Server 2008. You can get to it by going to the March 11th 2008 show here. Enjoy!
SQL Server 2008 JumpStart
Posted on: February 15, 2008 12:38 am
Phew – last week Kimberly and I spent 3 days teaching the ins-and-outs of SQL Server 2008 for DBAs/IT-Pros to about 130 Microsoft SQL Server experts and MVPs (like Kalen Delaney, Adam Machanic and Ron Talmage). This was the (95% complete) Beta delivery of a course we’ve been developing for the last six months for Microsoft [...]
