SQLBits 2011

Gather SQL Server Performance Data with PowerShell

It's important to keep a baseline of performance metrics that allow us to know when something is wrong and help us to track it down and fix the problem. This session will show you how to use PowerShell to gather your baseline and how to report it.
Understanding how your servers behave normally is critical to knowing where problems really are when they occur.  Reporting that in a form that's clear and consistent gives you credibility with your boss and your users.  In this session we'll discuss what performance counters to capture and why, and walk through a PowerShell script that gathers those counters and loads them into your administrative database where we'll then build a report showing the counter data in a way that easily shows you the performance characteristics of your system.  By tracking this over time you understand how the system is doing and will learn to easily see where the problems are when they occur.