Automate Performance Monitor Statistics Collection for SQL Server and Windows

By: Ranga Narasimhan   |   Read Comments (5)   |   Related Tips: More > Performance Tuning

Problem
You have about 100 SQL Servers installed in your production environment. You have performance problems on few of the servers, but they happen during the time when you are not watching the servers. So, how can you automate performance statistics collection on all the servers around the clock so we have the statistics for 24/7/365.

Solution
You can use the built-in windows utility "logman" that comes free.

Logman is the command line utility for Perfmon. Thru logman, it is easy to automate perfmon data collection which I will show you below.

Data Collection

First, we need to identify what Objects and Counters we need. From my experience, the below counters are good from a SQL Server point of view. We can automate creating one perfmon log file for each day. Then move the old files to a network share for later reference.

Cut and paste the contents below to a file name "SQL2005BaselineCounters.config" and save the file in "E:\perflogs". You can choose any local drive/folder, make sure there is enough space in it. Try not to use the same storage that your SQL Server databases use, because this can slow down your I/O throughput.

Note in the below code I am collecting SQL Server data for an instance named "MSSQL$DEV".  This will need to be replaced for your server. If you just have a default instance this will just be "SQLServer"

 

Next step is to create a counter log in perfmon which will use the above counters. From a command prompt, execute the statement below on your SQL Server box.

You will be prompted for the password

This will create a new counter log named "SQL2005Perf". To verify this, open perfmon and click "counter logs" under Performance logs and alerts.

Here is the notes for each option used above:

• SQL2005Perf - name of the counter log 
• -f bin - binary format, with a .blg extension
• -b 01/01/2009 00:00:05 - begin data and time, input a datetime to start the counter log at a later time, if you input a datetime that is past, the counter log will start immediately 
• -E 01/01/2009 23:59:00 - end date and time
• -si 05 - 5 second interval 
• -v mmddhhmm - filename will be named as SQL2005Perf_mmddhhmm.blg 
• -o "E:\perflogs\SQL2005Perf" - output folder name 
• -cf "E:\perflogs\SQL2005BaselineCounters.config" - config file name with the counters 
• -u domain\username * - the * will prompt for the password for the domain user account.

You can manually start and stop the above counter logs with below commands:

To get a list of all your counter logs you can run this command.

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Automate Data Collection

It would be nice if we have performance data for each day. This can be done by stopping the counter log at 11:59:59 PM and again starting it at 12:00:01 AM daily. Once you stop the counter log the log file is closed and starting the counter log creates a new log file.

Lets create a scheduled task which will do this.

Lets first create a batch file “StopCopyStart.bat” that will be executed by the scheduled task. Copy the contents below and save it in the folder “E:\perflogs”. Make sure to change the “Servername”, “SourceServerName” to match your servers.

From the command prompt execute this statement to create the scheduled task.
 

Here are the notes for each option used above:

• schtasks /create - create a new scheduled task
• /tn "Stop Copy And Start SQL2005Perf Perfmon Counter Log" - scheduled task name
• /tr E:\perflogs\StopCopyStart.bat - run this batch file
• /sc daily /st 23:59:59 - schedule time
• /ed 01/01/2099 - end date
• /ru system - user account

A new scheduled task with name "Stop Copy And Start SQL2005Perf Perfmon Counter Log" will now be created. From the command prompt type "schtasks", this will list all the scheduled tasks.

 

Next Steps

• The idea is to move the performance data .blg file from each of the SQL Server to a common share. Create one folder for each server and move the .blg file there. So, the user account to execute the scheduled task should have permissions on the share where we move the performance log file.
• You should do some housekeeping on this network share to delete files older than 30 or 60 days.
• Always have one week ( one file for each day of week ) performance data for each server to be used as a baseline. If you have any performance problems you can compare with the baseline.

Last Update: 6/19/2009

About the author

Ranga has been in IT for over 10 years working on Siebel, Visual Basic, Crystal Reports and SQL Server.

View all my tips

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Comments and Feedback:

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 - 1:33:26 PM - jerryhung	Read The Tip
I suggest looking into SQLH2 as well to capture perfmon data as well as SQL counter data easier to config, as well as centralize from 1 location   Combine it with SSRS, you have a powerful history of performance of all the servers to compare

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 - 4:16:06 AM - BAnderson

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Hey,   So I've been using this technique for years across my database environment (but write directly into a SQL DB and use our monitoring page to aggregate and average out readings over a minute for live perfmon stats), but since I upgraded (in-place) all my clusters to SQL 2008 from SQL 2005 (still on WIndows 2003) I can no longer connect to any of the cluster names via perfmon from my remote perfmon box.  I just instantly get the error "Unable to Connect to Machine".  I can connect to the host names but that's not gonna work as I need the virtual names.  All SQL 2008 instances on single boxes work fine, even ones with Windows Server 2008.  Any ideas?

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 - 6:29:55 AM - Fraggle	Read The Tip
I actually have a slighly different question.  I can get these counters started, but I cannot figure out how to automate the process of dropping them all into the sql server database.  I am using 2005.   Anyone got a walk through or can give me pointers on how to do it?  Thanks, Fraggle

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 - 12:02:29 PM - sql.warrior	Read The Tip
After you collected the trace file, the next step is use relog to import them into database. Refer to this article:  http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1722

Monday, January 31, 2011 - 7:47:25 AM - Bob	Read The Tip
Here is how you securely can collect performance data: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/collecting-performance-data-into-a-sql-server-table/

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