Without a doubt, the first metric most IT professionals use to understand SQL Server performance is the overall CPU usage, which is typically determined in one of two ways: First, you may use a remote-desktop technology to review the overall CPU usage in Task Manager.
Windows Task Manager
Second, you could take the more scientific route and employ these Performance Monitor counters:
- Processor: % Privileged Time
- Processor: % Processor Time
- Processor: % User Time
- System: Context Switches/sec
- System: Processor Queue Length
Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You know that CPU is running at a high percentage or is pegged. Now it is time to dig deeper and determine the status of other key SQL Server metrics.
Requires Free Membership to View
Hunt down SQL Server performance problems
Home: Introduction
Step 1: CPU usage
Step 2: Disk IO queuing
Step 3: Memory consumption
Step 4: Network bandwidth
Step 5: Transaction-level performance
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
|
Jeremy Kadlec Jeremy Kadlec is the Principal Database Engineer at Edgewood Solutions, a technology services company delivering professional services and product solutions for Microsoft SQL Server. He has authored numerous articles and delivers frequent presentations at regional SQL Server Users Groups and nationally at SQL PASS. Jeremy is also the SearchSQLServer.com Performance Tuning expert. Ask him a question here. Copyright 2005 TechTarget |
This was first published in December 2005
Join the conversationComment
Share
Comments
Results
Contribute to the conversation