First Responder Kit

There’s usually something that I think is funny in this space. Instead, I’m going to extend my already extensive day of civic duty by letting you know something interesting about jury duty. Sometimes, if you show up when they ask you to, they can make you come back for a second day if they…

First Responder Kit Release: Driving Miss Data

March 29, 2018

Ugh. Bungabase slow. When Grog try count meat, Glug eat meat. Then Grog get hungry and Glug try count meat. Bungalock. Need big head make bungabase fast. You big head? You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1459: A while back, Brent blogged about implicit transactions. In the comments, a smart commenter named Dan pointed…

First Responder Kit Release: SQLBits was pretty awesome but now I have to do work again

February 28, 2018

APRIL FOOLS! IT’S ONLY MARCH FIRST! Tomorrow. Butthead. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1407: @parlevjo2 gave us a check to make sure databases are owned by an existing user. Existence is everything, so I hear. #1416: After existence is probably location. After that is collation. @ktaranov let us know that our collation wasn’t all that. Especially…

First Responder Kit Release: Sunday, Boring Sunday

January 28, 2018

This is a modified limited release. After a few new feature releases, we’re achieving stasis. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. There are a couple points from the last release that I really need to emphasize: sp_BlitzCache got some new columns added to the output for tempdb spills. If you want to keep logging it…

First Responder Kit Release: It’s Too Cold Not To Do A Release

January 9, 2018

You look just like a snake when you crawl like a worm. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1310: @CferMN reported quite an odd conversion error! Turns out, division was a better idea than multiplication. #1341: We we missing the newest version of Windows, and we had a broken link. Thanks to @JaySpatzfor letting us know!…

Sizing A New Server? Start With Maintenance.

December 22, 2017

Backup and Recovery, CHECKDB and Corruption, First Responder Kit, SQL Server

dba, sql server

Clientele Most of out customers are on slightly (ahem) older (AHEM) hardware, and they have big questions: How do we know what kind of hardware we need? How do we load test it? How do we know what to change to make it better? The load test question is interesting, particularly because getting a reliable…

Introducing sp_BlitzLock: For Troubleshooting SQL Server Deadlocks

December 19, 2017

Deadlocks, First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzLock

Deadlocks are hard Especially when there are a lot of them. When there are dozens or more, looking at each graph is a pain. I had a script written that parsed out the XML, but really, having a folder full of random scripts is for old people. Like Twitter and reverse mortgages. So I turned…

sp_BlitzQueryStore: A Gentle Introduction

December 7, 2017

Execution Plans, First Responder Kit, Query Store (QDS), sp_BlitzQueryStore, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server 2017

dba, development, performance tuning, sql server

Odds and ends During the precon, we asked how many people were on 2016, how many people were aware of query store, how many people were using it, and how many people were using sp_BlitzQueryStore. About 1/3 of the hands went up at first, then for each successive question, fewer and fewer hands stayed up.…

First Responder Kit Release: Treating Object References Like Object Instances, Man

December 5, 2017

Object reference not set to an instance of an object. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1281 We’ve lowered the priority of Query Store being disabled. It’s just not as important as the backups you’re not taking and the corruption checks you’re not running. sp_BlitzCache Improvements #1253 Due to an unfortunate copy and paste incident,…

How to Track SQL Server Changes with sp_BlitzFirst

November 22, 2017

PowerBI, sp_BlitzFirst

In the First Responder Kit’s Power BI Dashboard, there’s a Quick Diagnosis results area where sp_BlitzFirst takes a guess at why your SQL Server was slow – or in this case, why it suddenly got faster: Logging your work in sp_BlitzFirst’s Quick Diagnosis results (click to zoom) In this case, wait times were bad, and…

Announcing the Free First Responder Kit Power BI Dashboard

November 21, 2017

What the heck is going on inside your SQL Server? Why’s it so slow? I wrote sp_BlitzFirst to answer that question, but that only works right now. You have to be standing in front of your computer to do diagnostics when the problem strikes. So now, you can run sp_BlitzFirst, have it log data to a…

First Responder Kit Release: The Ides Of November

November 15, 2017

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IB Rewop This is a cleanup release to get some of the pull requests in that didn’t make it in before the precon. There’s also a secret unlockable character that Brent is blogging about next week! Please clap. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1199 We’ve updated the unsupported builds list! Now you can…

How to Get Live Query Plans with sp_BlitzWho

October 31, 2017

Execution Plans, First Responder Kit, sp_BlitzWho, SQL Server 2016

sp_BlitzWho

sp_BlitzWho is our open source replacement for sp_who and sp_who2. It has all kinds of really neat-o outputs like how many degrees of parallelism the query is using, how much memory it’s been granted, how long it’s been waiting for memory grants, and much more. If you’re on SQL Server 2016 SP1 or newer, it…

First Responder Kit Release: Precon Precogs

October 24, 2017

This release comes to you from a hotel room in Chicago: The land of fiscal insolvency and one shooting per hour. It’s pretty nice, otherwise. This release is to get the pre-precon important stuff in. As much as I’d like to push all the recent contributions through, between travel, speaking, and uh… what do the…

How to Log Wait Stats to Table with sp_BlitzFirst

October 13, 2017

First Responder Kit, Wait Stats

When you’re analyzing SQL Server performance, one of the best places to start is wait stats. What’s your SQL Server waiting on? sp_BlitzFirst makes it really easy to trend this data over time for free with all currently supported versions of SQL Server (2008+). Just set up an Agent job to run this every 15 minutes:…

How to Do a Free SQL Server Performance Check

October 11, 2017

First Responder Kit, Processes and Practices, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzFirst

Your client or boss just said, “Find out why this SQL Server is slow.” You’ve already done a free SQL Server health check, and now you wanna investigate deeper. Step 1: Download & run sp_BlitzFirst. Start with wait stats, which tell you what the SQL Server has been waiting on since the service was last…

How to Do a Free SQL Server Health Check

October 10, 2017

First Responder Kit, Processes and Practices, sp_Blitz

sp_blitz

Your boss or client came to you and said, “Give me a quick health check on this SQL Server.” Step 1: Download & run sp_Blitz. Go to our download page and get our First Responder Kit. There’s a bunch of scripts and white papers in there, but the one to start with is sp_Blitz.sql. Open…

Getting Help with a Slow Server

October 6, 2017

Tara Kizer

First Responder Kit, Processes and Practices

StackExchange users often ask, “Why is my server slow?” Here’s a few tips to get better, faster answers. Server information You may have already included server information in your question, but it may not be sufficient. Run sp_Blitz to output a lot of server information fast. Transact-SQL EXEC sp_Blitz @OutputType = ‘markdown’, @CheckServerInfo = 1 1…

First Responder Kit Release: Still Totally Lacking A Servicing Model

September 29, 2017

A lot of people would think we’re crazy for releasing a FRK update a few days before a new version of SQL Server drops, but we’ve been adding 2017 compatible features for months Also none of you are on 2017 Most of you won’t live to be on 2017 If you’re lucky, your kids3000 will…

First Responder Kit Release: Fully Hand Automated

August 31, 2017