Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible

Chapter 37

Performance Monitor and PAL

In This Chapter

Observing Server Performance

Saving Counter Logs

Using PowerShell to Gather Performance Counters

As a Database Professional, using and interpreting performance counters is one of the most important skill sets you can develop. When server performance starts to go sideways, jumping in and “reading” what's happening on the server based on a set of counters allows you to quickly identify and attack trouble areas.

Performance Monitor, or PerfMon, has been around for quite a while and isn't going anywhere. Anyone working with Windows as an IT platform is probably familiar with PerfMon. These are the first tools used for high-level diagnostics and the health of any server.

SQL Server extends PerfMon by adding hundreds of SQL Server–specific counters. Although PerfMon alone doesn't provide enough detail to fully diagnose SQL Server, it does a great job to illustrate the overall server performance issues and highlighting SQL Server themes.

PerfMon is more than just a pretty face. PerfMon's counter logs can write data to a binary perflog (*.blg) file or to a comma-delimited file (universal across Windows versions).

Perflogs can be integrated into SQL Server Profiler for review and analysis. However, SQL Server Profiler will be deprecated in a future version of SQL Server. If you want to get up to speed on what's replacing Profiler, check out Chapter 40, “Extended Events.”