Open up Performance Monitor (aka Perfmon), then:
- Windows 2008 & newer – expand Monitoring Tools, click on Performance Monitor
- Windows 2003 & older – click System Monitor
This brings you to the graph. Click on the metrics at the bottom and click the red X at the top to remove each of them. We want to start clean.
Then click the + button to add a new counter. At the top, where it says “Select counters from computer”, put in the name of your SQL Server starting with two backslashes, like \\MYSQLSERVER and hit the Tab key. Perfmon will pause for a few seconds while it gets the list of Perfmon counters on that server, and then shows them in a list below.
Add these counters:
- Memory – Available MBytes
- SQLServer: Buffer Manager – Page Life Expectancy
- SQLServer: Memory Manager – Memory Grants Pending
- SQLServer: Memory Manager – Target Server Memory
- SQLServer: Memory Manager – Total Server Memory
- SQLServer: SQL Statistics – Batch Requests/sec
- SQLServer: SQL Statistics – Compilations/sec
While data starts to come in to the graph, watch our 30-minute video on How to Prove Your SQL Server Needs More Memory. I explain what the counters mean and how to interpret them:
The takeaways, arranged from easy to hard:
If your server is slow and you’ve got less than 64GB of memory, learn how to explain business costs as I explain in the video. It’s smarter to buy $500 worth of memory rather than spend days struggling with a problem and making risky changes to your server. Sure, the business is going to argue against you – that’s their job, and it’s your job to clearly explain the pros and cons of each side. You have to persuade.
If Memory Grants Pending is averaging over 0, queries can’t even start because they can’t get enough memory. You may have queries that have incorrect memory grants, or you may just desperately need more RAM.
If Compiles/Sec is over 10% of Batch Requests/Sec, SQL Server may not be able to cache execution plans. This causes increased CPU use and slower queries. There’s a lot of gotchas with this one, though – now the hard work starts, because you have to spend time analyzing your workload to see if the execution plans can even be reused.
If Page Life Expectancy is low, you may need memory to cache more data pages. In the video, I explain how to start with tuning indexes and queries first (since that’s typically a lower cost than buying more memory once you’re over 64GB). I mention these tools:
- sp_BlitzIndex™ – our free index analysis script
- Our 6-hour index training videos – by Kendra Little.
- Our SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting class – in-person training on indexes, queries, and more.
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Our classes are coming up: How to Be a Senior DBA and SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting.