SQL Server 2005 System Views Map

The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 System Views Map shows the key system views included in SQL Server 2005, and the relationships between them.

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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=2EC9E842-40BE-4321-9B56-92FD3860FB32&displaylang=en

SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2)

The Microsoft SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) allows you to collect information from instances of SQL Server, store this information, and run reports against the data in order to determine how SQL Server is being used.

SQLH2 collects four main types of information:
1. Feature Usage – What services/features are installed, running and level of workload on the service.
2. Configuration Settings – Machine, OS and SQL configuration settings, SQL instance and database metadata.
3. Uptime of the SQL Server service
4. Performance Counters (optional) – Used to determine performance trends

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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=EEDD10D6-75F7-4763-86DE-D2347B8B5F89&displaylang=en

SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports

The SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports are Reporting Services report files designed to be used with the Custom Reports feature introduced in the SP2 release of SQL Server Management Studio. The reports allow a database administrator to quickly identify whether there is a current bottleneck on their system, and if a bottleneck is present, capture additional diagnostic data that may be necessary to resolve the problem.

Common performance problems that the dashboard reports may help to resolve include:
- CPU bottlenecks (and what queries are consuming the most CPU)
- IO bottlenecks (and what queries are performing the most IO).
- Index recommendations generated by the query optimizer (missing indexes)
- Blocking
- Latch contention

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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1D3A4A0D-7E0C-4730-8204-E419218C1EFC&displaylang=en

SQLIO Disk Subsystem Benchmark Tool

SQLIO is a tool provided by Microsoft which can also be used to determine the I/O capacity of a given configuration.

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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9a8b005b-84e4-4f24-8d65-cb53442d9e19&displaylang=en

Internals Viewer for SQL Server

Internals Viewer is a tool for looking into the SQL Server storage engine and seeing how data is physically allocated, organised and stored.

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http://internalsviewer.codeplex.com/

SQLPing

SQLPing 3.0 performs both active and passive scans of your network in order to identify all of the SQL Server/MSDE installations in your enterprise.

Download from
http://www.sqlsecurity.com/Tools/FreeTools/tabid/65/Default.aspx

SQL Server 2005 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA)

This tool collects data from Microsoft Windows and SQL Server configuration settings. BPA uses a predefined list of SQL Server 2005 recommendations and best practices to determine if there are potential issues in the database environment.

Download from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=DA0531E4-E94C-4991-82FA-F0E3FBD05E63&displaylang=en