How to use PowerShell cmdlets, such as Select-String, to glance at the contents of the application logs, or use them in conjunction with Regular Expressions to sift through log files in detail looking for particular types of error. Read more
A SQL Server query is suddenly running slowly, for no obvious reason. Grant Fritchey shares a 5-point plan to help you track down the cause and fix the problem. Read more
One of your SQL Server instance shows a major dip in performance or throughput, affecting all the user databases. You notice that the slow interludes coincide, as if orchestrated. On investigation, it appears that several transactions running over that period were using a lot of space in tempdb. However, which of them, if any, are causing the tempdb bottleneck, and why? Read more
Israel Valverde explains the triple benefits of using Redgate Monitor to cover your SQL Server instances running on Amazon RDS, for SQL Server performance optimization, controlling AWS-hosting costs, and in providing a single, unified view of the health of all your SQL Servers, regardless of where they are hosted. Read more
Phil Factor explains how SQL Monitor helps focus performance tuning efforts on the tables and queries where 'rogue indexes' might be a significant problem, and then how to identify both 'missing' indexes that might be beneficial to the overall workload, and those that are unused or duplicated, and so are doing more harm than good. Read more
In this article, you'll learn how to detect and remove a common cause of SQL Server query performance problems: reliance on implicit datatype conversions. We'll use a combination of plan cache queries, extended events, and SQL Monitor. Read more
Phil Factor sets out with the modest aim of giving you enough of an introduction to waits to better understand the wait information you get from a SQL Server monitoring tool like SQL Monitor, and the rather overwhelming amount of information available in the underlying DMVs and Extended Events. Read more
How well do the SQL Server licenses you own match up with what you need for your current use? William Durkin explains how to use SQL Monitor to find out. Read more
Phil Factor on the fill factor, pages splits and index fragmentation, and how SQL Monitor can help you decide if a custom fill factor for certain indexes might help alleviate performance issues. Read more
Not only are SQL Monitor Groups probably the neatest and most maintainable way of ensuring that all your SQL Servers have the best possible configuration of alerts, but they represent a powerful way of categorizing your SQL Server estate. In this article, I'll show how to use the SQL Monitor PowerShell API to export these groups, save their settings onto a configuration management system, or compare groups of settings to see the differences between them. Read more