Did You Know? Troubleshooting Tools Update

Kalen Delaney — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:44:00 GMT

Last May, I blogged about free troubleshooting tools for SQL Server and today I received a comment that one of the tools listed seemed to no longer be available. So I thought I would publish a refresh.

There are dozens of great tools available, and I'm not even pretending that I am going to list them all. This post is really just an update to the tools I listed previously. So here is the list from my May post, with additional comments.

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RML Utilities for SQL Server

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944837
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7EDFA95A-A32F-440F-A3A8-5160C8DBE926&displaylang=en

RML Utilities are still around and better than ever. You can read about the CU1 here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2008/11/12/cumulative-update-1-to-the-rml-utilities-for-microsoft-sql-server-released.aspx

And some comments from the SQLCAT team here:

http://sqlcat.com/technicalnotes/archive/2008/02/01/precision-performance-for-microsoft-sql-server-using-rml-utilities-9-0.aspx

SQL Nexus

~~http://www.sqlnexus.net/~~

The SQL Nexus tools have moved to codeplex:

http://www.codeplex.com/sqlnexus

And if you want more free tools than the ones listed here, check out everything else available at Codeplex!

PSSDIAG Data Collection Utility

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5564386A-28C2-4483-8293-76FFF67B9EB3&displaylang=en

(This one is still here.)

SQL Server Performance Analysis Utilities Read80Trace and OSTRESS

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887057

Although the KB article is still available, the links it points to are broken.

OSTRESS and Read%Trace are are incorporated into RML tools, so see the first link above!

SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=EEDD10D6-75F7-4763-86DE-D2347B8B5F89&displaylang=en

The KB articles is still there, but you can also get the Health and History Tool from Codeplex:

http://www.codeplex.com/sqlh2

Performance Dashboard

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1d3a4a0d-7e0c-4730-8204-e419218c1efc&displaylang=en

(This one is still here.)

I started out that post by mentioning:

I'm very excited about the new Management Data Warehouse coming in SQL Server 2008 (which was called Performance Studio at one point), but keep in mind there are lots of available tools in the current versions.

And now that I've had a chance to use the MDW a bit, I've even more excited. I think THIS is the reason to upgrade to SQL 2008 (if you haven't found another reason yet.)

Have fun!

~Kalen

Did You Know? Free SQL Server Troubleshooting Tools

Kalen Delaney — Sun, 18 May 2008 03:47:00 GMT

I'm very excited about the new Management Data Warehouse coming in SQL Server 2008 (which was called Performance Studio at one point), but keep in mind there are lots of available tools in the current versions.

One of the students in my class last week put together this list of his favorites. Note that some of the tools can be used together. For example, the PSSDIAG collection utility output can be pumped into SQL Nexus for nice reporting and analysis.

RML Utilities for SQL Server

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944837

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7EDFA95A-A32F-440F-A3A8-5160C8DBE926&displaylang=en