First Responder Kit Updates

For the last few years, I’ve slowed the First Responder Kit release down to once per quarter. It felt pretty feature-complete, and I didn’t want to make y’all upgrade any more than you have to. You’re busy, and I don’t want to take up your time unless there’s something really big to gain from doing…

Two big sets of news this month! The Consultant Toolkit now supports imports to a database so you can track your clients’ health and performance over time, and sp_BlitzCache has a new @AI parameter. Set @AI = 2, and get a prompt you can copy/paste into the AI of your choice to help you tune…

This quarter’s release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025’s new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB’s operations in progress, accurate CPU usage on Docker containers, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, and much more. If you’d like to thank me for my work in maintaining the First Responder Kit, the best way…

This quarter’s release includes new checks for SQL Server 2025’s new memory pressure warnings, Azure SQL DB’s operations in progress, warnings about not using partitioned statistics where appropriate, plus bug fixes. Wanna watch me use it? Take the free class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Get The Consultant Toolkit to quickly…

I’mma wax philosophical for a second: I love the open source nature of the First Responder Kit because it lets anybody, anywhere, diagnose database problems faster. If you’re a full time employee somewhere today, you owe it to yourself to use the FRK scripts because if you ever switch from one company to another, your…

This quarter’s release contains a few advanced warnings & tools, like table input for sp_BlitzLock, new warnings about paused resumable index operations that will be deleted automatically by SQL Server 2022, and a new option to maintain carriage returns and line feeds in sp_BlitzCache’s output. Wanna watch me use it? Take the free class. To…

If there was ever a release you could skip, this is probably the one, because you could count this release’s changes on just one hand! Well, assuming you were an alien with six fingers. I won’t even recap the most important changes – you can just scroll down and read ’em. Wanna watch me use…

The wording of all of sp_BlitzIndex’s warnings is now much more clear and inclusive thanks to hard work by W. Eli Hayes and VladDBA. When Kendra Little first wrote sp_BlitzIndex about a decade ago to help you analyze your index designs, we brainstormed about how to surface warnings. Index design is not black and white:…

The next release would normally be August, but I’m doing a release a little early in order to fix 2 issues with the Consultant Toolkit. The May release broke the ability to automatically upload results to Amazon S3, and didn’t include all of sp_BlitzLock’s results. Those are now fixed, so I wanted to get another…

If you’ve hard-coded installer file names, there’s a big change in this release. There are now just 2 installer scripts: Install-All-Scripts.sql, and a new Install-Azure.sql, which only installs the scripts that are compatible with Azure SQL DB. The old Install-Core scripts are gone because we’ve deprecated sp_AllNightLog, sp_BlitzInMemoryOLTP, and sp_BlitzQueryStore. Read on for why. Wanna…

New this month: better sp_BlitzIndex performance on databases with tens of thousands of objects, sp_DatabaseRestore can run test scripts, and David Wiseman and Sean Killeen implemented basic automated testing for the First Responder Kit. Wanna watch me use it? Take the class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio users…

New this month: more work on letting sp_Blitz run with limited permissions, nicer Markdown output, sp_BlitzLock compatibility with Managed Instances, and more. Wanna watch me use it? Take the class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio users with the First Responder Kit extension: ctrl/command+shift+p, First Responder Kit: Import. PowerShell…

The last couple of releases have focused on running sp_Blitz with limited permissions, like not being able to see inside some user databases. Those efforts continue this month with a lot of work from Montro1981. Wanna watch me use it? Take the class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio…

Turns out y’all actually work over the summer – there are actually cool new features this month! I think I’m actually going to have to record updated sp_BlitzIndex, sp_BlitzLock, and sp_BlitzQueryStore modules for my “How I Use the First Responder Kit” class because these features are pretty awesome. Wanna watch me use it? Take the…

This one’s a pretty quiet release: just bug fixes in sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzLock, and sp_DatabaseRestore. Wanna watch me use it? Take the class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio users with the First Responder Kit extension: ctrl/command+shift+p, First Responder Kit: Import. PowerShell users: run Install-DbaFirstResponderKit from dbatools Get The Consultant…

This month’s big changes are performance tuning in sp_BlitzFirst & sp_BlitzLock. Part of the benefits of using the open source FRK is that when any of us work with *really* big/fast/ugly servers, we tune the FRK procs to work better in those environments – which means it’ll likely work better in yours, too. For example,…

Thanks to this technique to run SQL Server on Apple Silicon chips, I’m now developing exclusively on my Mac! I’ve been using a Mac for over 15 years, but in the past, I’ve always used Windows at some layer somewhere. This time around, it’s all Mac the whole way down, which is kinda nifty. Makes…

Santa’s elves took a break from building toys and shipped a new version of the First Responder Kit. There are some great improvements in here, like a makeover for sp_BlitzLock and much better PSPO compatibility for sp_BlitzCache. Wanna watch me use it? Take the class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure…

It’s fall – time to review your SQL Servers’ configurations, health, backups, and performance before fall turns into fail. To help, we’ve got a new version of the First Responder Kit. Wanna watch me use it? Take the class. To get the new version: Download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip Azure Data Studio users with the First…