Some monitoring tools (SqlServer)
A number of tools, whether or not supplied by Microsoft, are useful for
tracing performance or specific system information. In this section, we will quickly list a few, to encourage you to discover and use them.
The Windows Performance Toolkit, also called Xperf is a tool available for Vista and Windows Server 2008, mainly composed of two executables: xperf.exe, which helps the catch trace and xperfview.exe, which displays them. xperf.exe is based on ETW (Event Tracing for Windows), that you can activate in the traditional performance monitor (perfmon) via the "PerformanceLog and Events / Trace Logs" node. Its advantage is to be able to correlate traces of ETW format, eg traces of the system, and traces of Extended Events in SQL Server 2008.The trace record is possible on Windows Server 2003 by copying the executable xperf.exe by hand, but the processing of the results of the trace is only possible on Vista or Windows Server 2008.SQLDIAG
SQLDIAG executable is installed with SQL Server, whose goal is to collect the maximum amount of information system, usually to send to Microsoft support teams. It recovers data from the system and SQL Server on demand (taking a snapshot) or continuously. It can be invoked from the command line, or installed as a service. It is able to recover information from SQL Server instances in cluster.He recorded his results in text files in a specific directory. It can be configured from the command line or through a configuration file. It can recover Windows performance logs, SQL traces, Windows event logs, configuration information of the system and SQL Server, blocking information sessions, etc.. This is an extremely useful tool for diagnosing problems.SQLNexus
SQLNexus is developed by Bart Duncan and Ken Henderson tool that simplifies SQLDIAG using, firstly by providing a configuration file for SQLDIAG and scripts for additional information from Dynamic Management Views and then storing the output in a database, and providing comprehensive Reporting Services to analyze results.You can download on CodePlex: codeplex.com/sqlnexusLog Parser
Log Parser is not specifically for SQL Server. This is a very powerful tool for reading, research and reporting that works on all types of log files (log files, XML, CSV) and the Windows event logs, registry, etc.. You can read, search with a query language like SQL, format the result in text or HTML, and even generate graphs. You can download Log Parser here: microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/tools/logparser/. A free GUI Rights was created by a programmer, you can find it here: lizardl.com/Windows Sysinternals
The Sysinternals tools developed by Mark Russinovich (a recognized expert
of meandering Windows) and Bryce Cogswell, are available on the Microsoft website, since Winternals, Russinovich company, was acquired in 2006.You will find at the adress technet.microsoft.com/en- us / sysinternals / tools needed, easy to use system diagnostics. Among them:
• DiskMon: trace disk activity.
• Process Monitor: Displays at real-time business processes and threads, of
the registry and disk activities.
• Process Explorer: Displays in detailed process activity: handles, DLL
used, open files, etc.. Very useful for going into detail.
• TCPView: displays in real-time TCP and UDP open ports.A Graphic equivalent
of netstat.