First Aid - Free Scripts, Downloads, Videos

Our free First Responder Kit (zip) is packed with scripts, worksheets, and checklists like:

sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzIndex, sp_BlitzCache – free health check scripts
White papers – on Availability Groups, Google Compute Engine, disaster recovery in the cloud, and more
Worksheets and e-books – like our SQL Server Setup Checklist and the HA/DR Worksheet

It’s totally free because we’ve been there too. We’re database administrators and developers who know how hard it is to keep SQL Server fast and reliable, and we want to make your job easier. Later, if you need consulting for tough pains that have you stumped, we hope you’ll remember us and stop by.

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- The First Responder Kit (sp_Blitz, Setup Checklist, etc)
- Email me when the First Responder Kit is updated
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Instructions

Also known as the fine manual that you probably won’t read at first. You’ll regret that later. It’s okay. We’re the same way.

Health Check: sp_Blitz

Is my SQL Server healthy, or sick?

Speed Check: sp_BlitzFirst

Why is my SQL Server slow right now?

Query Check: sp_BlitzCache

Which queries have been using the most resources?

Index Check: sp_BlitzIndex

Are my indexes designed for speed?

Vital Stats: Power BI

Graph server and query performance over time.

Cloud Restores: sp_AllNightLog

How can I use the cloud for disaster recovery?

Query Trending: sp_BlitzQueryStore

How has my query plan changed over time?

Who's Doing What: sp_BlitzWho

Who’s running what queries right now?

Recent First Responder Kit Changes

Sizing A New Server? Start With Maintenance.

December 22, 2017

Erik Darling

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

Erik Darling

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

Erik Darling

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

Erik Darling

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

Brent Ozar

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

Brent Ozar

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

Erik Darling

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

Brent Ozar

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

Erik Darling

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

Brent Ozar

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:…