Brent Ozar has been writing excellent articles for a long, long time, so I’m not sure how I managed to take so long to find these two little beauties:

Pre-Install Checklist

Post-Install Checklist

These puppies are firmly in the indispensable section of my bookmarks.

Thanks Brent

The guys over at PSS SQL Blog have written a short but really sweet article about how to really detect whether you have a bottleneck with SQL Server implementations.

It gives a few pointers of what to look for if you really start digging including:

• PAGE I/O Waits (select * from sys.dm_os_wait_stats where wait_type like ‘%PAGEIO%’)
• Virtual File Stats (select * from sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(-1, -1))
• Stalled I/O Warnings
• Additional disk based performance counters and available hardware utilities

I found this useful recently when SQL Server was virtualised and all other methods of monitoring looked fine (perfmon, vCharter), but couldn’t find the problem.

I think I have stumbled across the best free SQL Server tools list in the world ever…!

The guys at sqlteam have compiled a list so comprehensive that I don’t know where to begin:

• SMSS Add-Ons
• Analysis Tools
• Performance Monitors
• Upgrades & Migration
• Code Formatting

You’ll have loads of fun with this page for a long time, I know I did. Check it out here.

SQL Server can be fantastic, but when the databases get to be really large it can become very difficult to fit in a backup window.

Inevitably people start to investigate SAN based snapshots. Almost all storage vendors have the capability to talk directly with SQL Server to quiesce the DB long enough to take the snapshot, but this in itself can cause issues due to the software limitations.

The pros and cons of SAN based snapshots are discussed in this excellent article over at searchsqlserver.

I found a fantastic document over at SQLCAT that outlines how to troubleshoot and diagnose performance issues in SQL Server 2005/2008.

I’ve blogged about it here as the principles are just as applicable to SQL Server in a physical or virtual environment.

Enjoy reading this small, but very succinct document here.

This website is awash with great articles, so if you get chance to check it out then do.