Useful Perfmon Counters for SQL Server

I recently came across a useful poster showing Perfmon Counters for SQL Server.

You can download the PDF file here: SQLServer-Perfmonance-Poster

Hardcore troubleshooting using Logs, Process Monitor, PowerShell and Excel

I’m a huge fan of the Sysinternals Suite – Process Monitor being one of my faves – and am loving using PowerShell to do ever more, but this post is at another level: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2012/06/01/what-s-causing-that-dfsr-change-storm.aspx

Hopefully I’ll be able to use similar techniques for those really tricky problems that rear their ugly head from time to time. Bring it on!

Configuring Notifications in System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010

Scenario

You’ve successfully installed and configured System Center Essentials (SCE) 2010. You now need to configure notifications.

There are 3 parts to this:

  1. Channels
  2. Subscribers
  3. Subscriptions
Find out how they all work together below.

[Read more…]

Malware Hunting with the Sysinternals Tools

I’ve just finished watching the best instructional video to date on Malware Hunting with the Sysinternals Tools, part of the latest TechEd 2012 sessions. There is also a similar PDF available for many of these tips.

The Sysinternals Suite has been my one of my favourite toolkits for many years, and although I already use most of the techniques shown in the video above, there were a few new features for me to get stuck into. Highly recommended.

Other TechEd sessions I’ve enjoyed watching include videos from the following speakers:

 

Performance Monitor counters for IOPS

I usually refer to this excellent TechNet post when using PerfMon: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.08.pulse.aspx

However, for measuring IOPS, these counters are better:

  • Current Disk Queue Length
  • Disk Reads/sec
  • Disk Transfers/sec
  • Disk Writes/sec

These counters were recommended from this video on VDI and IOPS: http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/videos/archive/2012/03/19/windows-iops-deep-dive-what-iops-means-to-you-and-why-you-can-t-do-vdi-without-knowing-about-them_2C00_-a-video-from-BriForum-2011.aspx