Have you ever used Perfmon to collect performance statistics about a particular Windows Server? Do you hate manually picking the counters out of the list? Do you trace basically the same counters every time?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, here’s a tip that can save you some time. Once you’ve created and saved a trace, you can save/export it as an HTML document. When you need to trace a new server, with a few quick Find/Replaces from your favorite text editor, you can be up and tracing in minutes on the new host, without using the interface to pick and choose each of your counter objects.

Here’s how to do create a Perfmon trace template:

1. If you already have a saved trace somewhere, open perfmon on that server, expand Performance Logs and Alerts and click on Counter Logs. If you don’t already have a saved trace, you’ll have to create one before getting started.
2. From the Performance Logs and Alerts screen, right-click on your trace and click on Save Settings As…
3. Save the file somewhere and give it a meaningful name. (The default location is My Documents.)
4. Copy the file somewhere onto your machine for later use.

Congratulations. You’ve created and saved a template. It’s that easy. Now let’s say you’re ready to use it somewhere else.

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Server virtualization is becoming a very hot topic out in the wild, and for good reason. This is a fantastic technology to bring to the x86 platform. When used right, it will solve a lot of problems and potentially reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), while allowing many data centers to become greener by reducing power consumption, cooling requirements and waste (fewer servers = less hardware to dispose of later on). Not every server, however, is a candidate to be “virtualized.” When used in the wrong situation, virtualization can be a support nightmare.

I’m going to write a small series of posts on this topic because its something that will affect a lot of us even if you aren’t a DBA. I’m starting at the very beginning, so if you’ve already created virtual templates for all of your core applications, this post won’t have anything new for you. If you’re wondering what about “virtual” is virtual, this is the post for you to start at. Due to the number of different technologies and platforms and and lack of time on my part, I’m going to stick to Microsoft technologies (Microsoft Virtual Server 2005) and write from the perspective of an MS SQL Server DBA. Let’s get started.

What is server virtualization? (more…)