Perfmon and Profiler 101

© 2008 Quest Software, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

About Me: Brent Ozar

• SQL Server Expert for
Quest Software
• Former SQL DBA
• Managed >80tb SAN,
VMware
• Dot-com-crash
experience
• Specializes in
performance tuning

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Today’s Agenda
• The Honda Civic and the Nissan GT-R
• Metrics, Trace, Mitigations
• A New Secret Weapon
• Resources and Q&A

If You Don’t Need to Go Fast…

From http://flickr.com/photos/stevekeys/2755142278/

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But The Faster You Want To Go

The More You Have To Measure

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Windows “Check Engine” Light

And If You Wanna Go Fast:

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Two Approaches to Detection
• Exceptions Monitoring: Check Engine
• Proactive Monitoring: Detailed Gauges

Where Do We Start?
Hardware

Windows

SQL Server

Tables,
Indexes

Query

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Capture Metrics With Perfmon
• Performance Monitor, aka Perfmon
• Ships with all Windows versions
• Polls any server from your desktop
• Pulls performance metrics
• Writes them to a file
• Requires some OS permissions
• Does not include alerts or analytics

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Memory Counters
• Memory – Available Mbytes
• Paging File - % Usage
• SQLServer:Buffer Manager –
– Buffer cache hit ratio
– Page life expectancy
• SQLServer:Memory Manager – Memory
G
Grants Pending
P di

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Storage Metrics: Physical Disk
• % Disk Time
• Avg. Disk Queue Length
• Avg. Disk sec/Read
• Avg. Disk sec/Write
• Disk Reads/sec
• Disk Writes/sec

CPU Metrics
• Processor - % Processor Time
• System – Processor Queue Length
• SQLServer:General Statistics – User
Connections (not CPU, just “other”)

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The Raw Output: CSV Files

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Adding Analytical Formulas

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That’s a Lot of Zeroes!

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Sorting High to Low

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What To Look For, In Order
• System – Processor Queue Length
• Memory – Available Mbytes
• Lock pages in memory!

What To Look For Next

• Disk metrics on the page file drive
• Disk metrics on the log file drive
• Disk metrics on the data file drive
• Disk metrics on the TempDB drive

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Got Everything on One Drive?
• Narrow it down with the DMV
sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats
y _ _ _ _

What If We Could Data Mine It?

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Table Analysis Tools For The Cloud

Detecting Categories of Load

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Capture Queries with a Trace

Columns to Capture

What’s Going On What The Impact Was

• Text Data • CPU
• DatabaseID and/or • Reads
DatabaseName • Writes
• Login Name • Duration
• Host Name • Start Time
• Application Name • End Time

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Profiler’s Results: A Trace Table

Order By Duration Descending

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 Casting and Grouping

Another Cloud Analytics Candidate

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Another Way: Perf Dashboard

Correlate Metrics & Trace

• Show a cause and effect relationship
• Fields to mentally “join”
join on:
– Date/Time ranges
– CPU
– Reads/Writes
– Duration

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Sample Problem #1
• Metrics tell us:
– Very high disk queue
lengths on data drive
• Trace tells us:
– Report queries doing
table scans w/o indexes
– Many scheduled reports
run simultaneously
i lt l

Ways We Can Mitigate It

• Add covering indexes
• Modify existing indexes
• Run reports serially, not all at once
• Add hard drives to the data file array
• Add memory to cache scanned tables

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Sample Problem #2
• Metrics tell us:
– Page file drive queue lengths
average >20
– Page file use averages >1%
– Available memory averages
<200mb
– Buffer cache hit ratio and
page life expectancy are high
• Trace tells us:
– No unusual queries

Memory Configuration

Server: 4gb
g ram

OS: SQL: App:

1gb 3gb 1gb

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Ways We Can Mitigate It
• Add memory and enable AWE/PAE
• Add memory and upgrade to 64-bit
64 bit
• Reduce SQL’s min/max memory sizes
• Move the app to its own server

Sample Problem #3
• Metric looks OK, but
everyy 15 minutes:
– Long drive queues on the
log file drive
– Page life expectancy
drops near zero
– Network traffic jumps
• Trace
T tells
ll us:
– Transaction log backups
are running

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Ways We Can Mitigate It
• Stop doing log backups
• Put the databases in simple mode
• Add drives to the transaction log array
• Throttle the transaction log backups

Sample Problem #4
• Metrics tell us:
– CPU average is high
– Disk, memory look OK
• Trace tells us:
– Queries are using
cursors
– Operating on
individual records, not
sets

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How We Can Mitigate It
• Change cursor to set-based query
• Buy really fast processors
• Spend a lot on licensing

Wrapping Things Up
• Double-check the event log first
• Don
Don’tt get overwhelmed: focus with the
Metric – Trace – Mitigation process
• Show a clear cause and effect
• Use cloud-based BI to get an edge

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Resources On The Web
• My posts about Perfmon and analytics:
www.BrentOzar.com/perfmon
p
www.BrentOzar.com/perfmoncloud

• Excel Table Analysis Tools for the Cloud:

www.SQLServerDataMining.com/cloud

• SQL Server community:

SQLServerPedia.com

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