Published on

June 10, 2014

Exploring SQL Server Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting

As a SQL Server professional, I often receive numerous questions about performance tuning and troubleshooting. Many people struggle with improving performance, identifying problematic queries, understanding disk space consumption, finding CPU-hogging queries, tracking dropped tables or databases, monitoring memory usage, and keeping track of backups and restores. The list goes on and on.

While there are plenty of resources available, such as online courses and scripts, I want to introduce you to a set of handy utilities that come with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) out-of-the-box. These utilities can help you address many of the common performance-related questions and challenges you may encounter.

Imagine having a dashboard for your SQL Server environment, just like the dashboard in a vehicle that displays speed, fuel level, RPM, and warning indicators. Executives rely on such dashboards and reports to monitor the health of their systems. Similarly, DBAs often wish they had similar capabilities to monitor and manage their SQL Server instances.

What many DBAs may not be aware of is that SQL Server has included a set of reports since SQL Server 2005. These reports provide valuable insights into the health and performance of your SQL Server environment. You can access these reports directly from SSMS, making it easy to analyze and troubleshoot performance issues.

Where to Find the Reports

To access the reports, simply right-click on the Server Node or a specific Database in SSMS, then select “Reports” and “Standard Reports”. In SQL Server 2014, you will find approximately 23 different reports under the Server Node and 18 reports under the Database Node.

Exploring the Reports

In this blog series, we will explore these hidden gems and learn how to effectively use them in your day-to-day life as a DBA. Each report serves a specific purpose and helps administrators answer common questions related to database disk usage, disk usage by tables and partitions, transaction blocking, and more.

It’s worth noting that these reports are not stored as plain .rdlc files, but in some other internal format. However, it is possible to create custom .rdlc files and use them with SSMS.

Throughout this series, we will dive into the functionality of the most commonly used reports and discuss how you can maximize your productivity by leveraging these built-in tools.

I hope you will join me on this journey of exploring SQL Server performance tuning and troubleshooting. If you have already been using these reports in your environment, I would love to hear which reports you find most useful and why.

Stay tuned for the first installment of this blog series!

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