Optimizing SQL Server Performance: Using Your Counters – Part 1

SQL Server DBA Professionals

2 Global MarketingUnderstanding Query Execution Plans

What counters should I monitor?

SQL Server Performance counters give you quick and useful information about currently running operations. In terms of managing SQL Server, there are two broad reasons for monitoring performance counters:

1. Increasing operational efficiency2. Preventing bottlenecks

Although they have some overlap, these two reasons allow you to easily choose a number of data points to monitor.

3 Global MarketingUnderstanding Query Execution Plans

Improve operational efficiency

Operational monitoring checks for general resource usage. It helps answer questions like:

You can also use the data for trending purposes. A good example would be collecting the sizes of all the data files in order to trend their growth rates and forecast future resource requirements.

• Is the server about to run out of resources like CPU, Disk Space, or memory?

• Are the data files able to grow?• Do fixed-size data files have enough free

space for data?

4 Global MarketingUnderstanding Query Execution Plans

Improve operational efficiency

To answer the three questions posed above, users should look at the following counters:

5 Global MarketingUnderstanding Query Execution Plans

Prevent bottlenecks

Application of bottleneck monitoring focuses much more on SQL Server performance-related matters. The data you collect helps answer questions such as:

• Is there a CPU bottleneck?

• Are the major SQL Server subsystems, such as the buffer cache and plan cache, healthy?• Do we have contention in the database?

• Is there an I/O bottleneck?

Dell’s Spotlight for SQL Server helps discover performance issues before impacting end users.

6 Global MarketingUnderstanding Query Execution Plans

Prevent bottlenecks

To answer questions like these, look at the following counters:

7 Global MarketingUnderstanding Query Execution Plans

Prevent bottlenecks

As well as these counters:

Learn More

Click to learn more about Optimizing SQL Server Performance.

To read the original post Click Here.