Professional SQL Server® 2005 Performance Tuning

2.13. Best Practices for System Monitor

There are a number of best practices that you should consider when running System Monitor that will help you get the most from System Monitor and avoid some of the common pitfalls.

2.13.1. Taking a Baseline

It's probably the last thing on your mind. The phone has finally stopped ringing, and you finally have a chance to make sure the backups ran last night and grab a coffee. However, you may be grateful at some point soon that you did actually make time to take a baseline. All that's needed is to run System Monitor for 24 hours with a 15-minute sample interval, covering the main system components. This alone could be instrumental in prompt fault resolution. Try to invest a few minutes to set up a trace, and you'll see the benefits if you ever have a performance problem.

Each time you make a significant change to a software or hardware configuration, re-run your System Monitor baseline for 24 hours. Very quickly, you and the Change Managers should become comfortable with the likely (low) performance impact and associated risk of running System Monitor. Don't forget, each time you apply an operating system or application patch, upgrade the SAN fabric firmware, or change the networking routing table, take a new baseline.

2.13.2. Retaining Performance Logs

Anytime you take performance logs, keep them for future reference. You never know when the next problem may occur, and having historic log data available will enable you to make comparisons ...