First Responder Kit

Monitoring, sp_BlitzFirst, Videos

Everybody tells you to capture baselines – but what exactly are you supposed to capture? Which Perfmon counters matter? How do you track which data files are growing, and which ones are slow? How can you track which queries are using the most resources? All you have to do is install the free, open source…

Updated First Responder Kit with Your January Code Resolutions

Last Updated January 28, 2019

I have a sneaking suspicion that a bunch of you made New Year’s Resolutions to contribute to open source, because y’all got started with a bang this year. We’ve even got improvements from Microsoft folks for Azure Managed Instances! You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Changes Improvements: skipping checks on Azure SQL DB Managed…

sp_BlitzIndex's new statistics histograms at the bottom

How Should We Show Statistics Histograms in sp_BlitzIndex?

Last Updated January 4, 2019

Indexing, sp_BlitzIndex

If you’re a graduate of my free How to Think Like the SQL Server Engine course – and you’d better be, dear reader – then you’re vaguely familiar with DBCC SHOW_STATISTICS. It’s a command that shows you the contents of a statistics histogram. When I’m doing the first two parts of the D.E.A.T.H. Method – (D)eduplicating identical…

Updated First Responder Kit for January 2019: Extraneous Syllables

Last Updated December 26, 2018

Does anyone know what the date really is? I usually don’t, and I often consider how doomed humanity would be if I were the smartest person on the planet during any given era. Anyway, you should go hug someone smarter than you. Unless they have sensory or boundary issues. Or a restraining order against you. Thank…

Updated First Responder Kit for November 2018: Get Into Sports Dummy

Last Updated November 30, 2018

COACH! I dunno, I just like this picture. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1786 – @dallyhorton made a good point: if we’re gonna warn you about Change Tracking, we should tell you which database it’s enabled for. #1791 – Who do DMV queries think they are, blocking each other? Get over yourselves. #1793 – CheckIds shouldn’t be…

How to Troubleshoot Blocking and Deadlocking with Scripts and Tools

Last Updated November 28, 2018

Deadlocks, Monitoring, sp_BlitzLock

When you need to find which queries are blocking other queries, your decision comes down to when the blocking happened. Is it happening now, recently, or coming up soon? During a live emergency, start with sp_WhoIsActive. Adam Machanic’s excellent free sp_WhoIsActive replaces Activity Monitor, sp_who, and sp_who2, and it’s way more powerful. The documentation is extensive –…

First Responder Kit Release: Fingers Crossed!

Last Updated October 2, 2018

This is a small release just to make sure you don’t forget about us. We know you’re busy. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1755 – @MisterZeus added a new check for alerts that don’t send information out. I mean, is that even an alert? #1766 – @jadarnel27 added some code to help folks who have a standard (non-sa)…

First Responder Kit Release: What Does A Fish Know About Friday?

Last Updated August 31, 2018

I know, it seems like just yesterday I was doing one of these releases. But no, it was three weeks ago. You’ve just been drunk for a really long time. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1698 – Now warns you about any SQL Modules that have ANSI_NULLS or QUOTED_IDENTIFIER off. Thanks @MisterZeus! #1719 – @TheUsernameSelectionSucks pointed out…

First Responder Kit Release: A Year From Now These Will All Stop Working On 2008 And 2008R2

Last Updated August 10, 2018

You think I’m kidding. Time bomb. Boom. Get your upgrade underwear on. You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1664 – We’re officially smart enough to not warn people that we’re recompiling our own stored procedures. #1669 – Reworded the stacked instances details. Servers may be installed and not running. #1687 – @josh-simar has servers linked with AD accounts,…

First Responder Kit Release: Like pssdiag, if pssdiag had parents who cared

Last Updated July 18, 2018

I went to the PFE and guess what he told me? Guess what he told me? He said girl you better try fix those spinlocks too No matter what you do, now run this tool You can download the updated FirstResponderKit.zip here. sp_Blitz Improvements #1620: @AAvella schooled us on Group Policy registry settings. Someday, we’ll get our act…

How to Fix sp_BlitzIndex Aggressive Indexes Warnings

Last Updated July 1, 2020

sp_BlitzIndex

sp_BlitzIndex gives your indexes a psychiatrist-style evaluation. It’s a lot like a real psychiatrist: it’s just flagging behaviors, and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with being a hoarder, or a workaholic, or a furry. They’re just behavioral traits. Let your freak flag fly. One of the warnings is “Aggressive Indexes,” which means sys.dm_db_operational_stats reports minutes of…

First Responder Kit Release: Just When You Think There’s Nothing New Left To Do

Last Updated June 4, 2018

First Responder Kit, First Responder Kit Updates

T*m* f*r An*th*r F*rst R*spond*r K*t R*l**s*. All joking aside! A big thank you goes out to a few people this go around: @jadarnel27 for not only contributing a bunch of Super Professional T-SQL, but also for writing a web scraping application to compile a list of current SQL Server versions. @nedotter @ktaranov and Aleksey Nagorskiy for putting together…

First Responder Kit Release: Darn May Showers

Last Updated May 9, 2018

First Responder Kit, First Responder Kit Updates

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

Last Updated May 9, 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

Last Updated May 9, 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

Last Updated May 9, 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

Last Updated May 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.

Last Updated December 16, 2017

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

Last Updated March 2, 2021