Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed- P150 pdf

FIGURE 39.3 The Configure Management Data Warehouse Wizard’s Select Configuration Task window.. Starts the System Data collection sets To invoke the Configure Management Data Warehouse W

FIGURE 39.3 The Configure Management Data Warehouse Wizard’s Select Configuration Task

window

The Data Collector has specific roles for data collection and management data warehouse

tasks The logins and roles required for data collection need to be created on the server

that performs the data collection Logins and roles for the MDW need to be created in the

server that hosts the MDW These logins and the MDW are created using the Configure

Management Data Warehouse Wizard, which performs the following tasks:

Creates the management data warehouse

Installs the predefined System Data collection sets

Maps logins to management data warehouse roles

Enables data collection

Starts the System Data collection sets

To invoke the Configure Management Data Warehouse Wizard, perform the following

tasks on the SQL Server instance where you want to host the MDW:

1 Ensure that SQL Server Agent is running (for information on starting SQL Server

Agent, see Chapter 16, “SQL Server Scheduling and Notification”)

2 In Object Explorer in SSMS, expand the server instance that will host the MDW and

expand the Managementnode for that server

3 Right-click Data Collection and then click Configure Management Data Warehouse

This starts the Configure Management Data Warehouse Wizard

4 Click on Next to display the Select Configuration Task window, as shown in

Figure 39.3

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If you’ve already created a repository database for the SQL Server Utility (see the “SQL

Server Utility” section later in this chapter), you must use this same database as the

MDW for the Data Collector You can skip the process of creating the MDW and jump

right to the configuration of the Data Collector On the Configure Management Data

Warehouse Storage screen (look ahead to Figure 39.6), you specify the name of the

server that was set up as the utility control point (UCP) and specify the name of the

utility data warehouse database that was set up to collect the SQL Server Utility

perfor-mance statistics

In the Select Configuration Task window, make sure the radio button for Create or

Upgrade a Management Data Warehouse is selected and click Next Specify the name of

the server instance that will host the MDW and click on New to create the MDW

data-base This brings up the standard New Database dialog Enter the name you want to use

for the MDW database and specify the location of the database files if you want the

data-base created in different drive or directory than the default data file directory

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If you are creating the MDW on a server that you will also be monitoring with the Data

Collector, it’s a good idea to put the MDW on drives separate from where your

produc-tion databases reside to avoid the potential for any I/O contenproduc-tion between the MDW

and your production databases

Also, because of the anticipated growth of the MDW, you might want to change the

default autogrow size of the MDW from 50MB to possibly 250 or 500MB and set the

initial size to at least 500MB or 1GB

Before saving your settings and creating the MDW database, display the Options page and

make sure that the database is configured for Simple recovery mode For the current

release of the Data Collector, the management data warehouse should be created using the

Simple recovery model, to minimize logging

When you are satisfied with the database configuration, click on OK to create the MDW

database After the database is created and you are brought back to the Configure

Management Data Warehouse Storage screen (see Figure 39.4), click Next to continue to

the Map Logins and Users screen On this screen, assign the appropriate MDW roles to

your SQL Server users (see Figure 39.5) Any users who need to view the Data Collector

reports need the mdw_readerrole

ptg FIGURE 39.4 The Configure Management Data Warehouse Storage screen

FIGURE 39.5 The Map Logins and Users screen

By default, no user is a member of the MDW database roles User membership in these

roles must be granted explicitly Members of the mdw_adminrole have Read, Write, Update,

and Delete access to the management data warehouse Members of this role can change

the management data warehouse schema when required (for example, adding a new table

when a new collection type is installed) and run maintenance jobs on the management

data warehouse, such as archive or cleanup Members of the mdw_writerrole can upload

and write data to the management data warehouse; any Data Collector that stores data in

the management data warehouse has to be a member of this role Members of the

mdw_readerrole have Read access to the management data warehouse primarily for the

purpose of supporting troubleshooting by providing access to historical data

It is recommended that you create a new login for data collection and map it as shown in

Figure 39.5

After you map the users, click on Next to bring up the Complete the Wizard screen, which

provides a summary of the tasks to be performed If everything looks okay, click Finish to

perform the configuration of the MDW, which includes running the installation script to

install the required schema objects in the MDW

After you have created the MDW and made it available, the next step is to begin data

collection for one or more of your SQL Server 2008 instances Right-click on the Data

Collectionnode in Object Explorer and select the Configure Management Data

Warehouse option again On the Select Configuration Task screen (refer to Figure 39.3),

select the Set Up Data Collection radio button and click Next On the Configure

Management Data Warehouse Storage screen (see Figure 39.6), specify the name of the

server that hosts the MDW and the name of the MDW database created previously When

specifying the server, you can also specify which directory you want the Data Collector to

use for its local file cache (again, if possible, this should be on a different drive than where

your database data files reside to minimize I/O contention) If you leave the value blank, it

uses the default SQL Agent TEMPdirectory

FIGURE 39.6 The Configure Management Data Warehouse Storage screen when configuring

data collection

When you finish making your selections, click Next to bring up the Complete the Wizard

screen, which provides a summary of the tasks to be performed If everything looks okay,

click Finish to have the wizard perform the configuration of the system collection sets and

enable data collection

The System Data Collectors

When the Configure Management Data Warehouse Wizard is finished, you should see

three additional nodes under the Data Collectornode:Disk Usage,Query Statistics,

FIGURE 39.7 Data Collection Set Properties window for the Disk Usage Data Collector

andServer Activity You can double-click each node, or right-click and select Properties,

to open the Properties window The Properties window for the Disk Usage Data Collector

is shown in Figure 39.7

The main item you may want to change in the Data Collection Set Properties window is

the data collection and upload schedule By default, the wizard configures the Disk Usage

Collection set to run in noncached mode every six hours Depending on how active your

server is, you might want to increase or decrease the frequency that it runs You can also

configure how long it should retain data in the MDW By default, it is configured to retain

data for two years (730 days) This is probably fine for keeping track of disk usage, but for

more active Data Collector Sets, you might want to reduce the retention period to reduce

the size of the MDW For example, the default retention period for the Query Statistics and

Server Activity Data Collectors is 14 days

Both the Query Statistics and Server Activity Data Collectors are configured to cache data

and upload to the MDW on a separate schedule If you look in the General page of the

Data Collection Set Properties window for these Data Collectors, you see that the schedule

Query Statistics Data Collector is to gather information every 10 seconds, and the Server

Activity collector gathers information every 60 seconds To view the upload schedule, click

on the Uploads page (see Figure 39.8) Both Data Collectors, by default, are configured to

upload the cached data to the MDW every 15 minutes To change the upload schedule,

you can either pick from an existing schedule or create a new one (Figure 39.8 shows the

Pick Schedule list) The Upload Properties page also displays the last time the cached data

was uploaded to the MDW

In very active servers, the Data Collector can generate a lot of data, and its storage tables

can fill up with millions of rows within hours You might want to modify the collector job

schedules and decrease the frequency of data collections depending on the use of each

server and your monitoring requirements

NOTE

Data collection for the built-in system collection sets begins automatically after the

Configure Management Data Warehouse completes Depending on how active your

servers are, it likely will take awhile for some meaningful data to accumulate You

might want to wait an hour or so before looking at the reports

Data Collector Reports

After you set up data collection, SQL Server Management Studio provides three new

reports for viewing data accumulated by the Data Collector: Server Activity History, Disk

FIGURE 39.8 Data Collection Set upload schedule

FIGURE 39.9 Disk Usage Summary report

Usage Summary and Query Statistics History You can view these reports by right-clicking

on the Data Collectionnode and selecting Reports, and then select Management Data

Warehouse From there, you can choose one of the three built-in reports:

size) and average daily growth

queries by CPU, Duration, Total I/O, Physical Reads, and Logical Writes

%, Disk I/O Usage, Memory Usage, and Network Usage, plus SQL Server Wait

statis-tics by wait type and SQL Server activity

Figure 39.9 displays an example of the Disk Usage Summary Report All the data collection

reports provide drill-down capabilities on just about every data element and widget

displayed in the main report For example, in the Disk Usage Summary report, you can

click on the database name to display a more detailed breakdown of the disk usage for

that specific database Figure 39.10 shows the Disk Usage details for the

AdventureWorks2008R2database If you click on the Trend graph or the current database

or log size, it displays a more detailed graph showing the growth trends for the database

over time since the data collection session started

FIGURE 39.10 Disk Usage report for AdventureWorks2008R2 database.

If you want to run reports for any of the monitored servers without having navigate to the

Data Collectionnode for each server instance, you can open the server instance that

hosts the MDW Browse to the MDW database in the SSMS Object Browser and right-click

on that database Then select Reports and select the the Management Data Warehouse

Overview report (see Figure 39.11)

The Management Data Warehouse Overview report lists which servers the data collection

is running on and shows the most recent times data was uploaded for each of the

collec-tion sets You can click on the hyperlinks below each of the listed colleccollec-tion sets to bring

up that corresponding report for that server For example, if you click on the link below

Server Activity for the LATITUDED830-W7 server, it displays the Server Activity History

report, as shown in Figure 39.12

FIGURE 39.11 Management Data Warehouse Overview report

FIGURE 39.12 The Server Activity History report

Like the Disk Usage report, most of the data elements in the Server Activity History report

are hyperlinks that let you drill down into more detail For example, you can click in the

line in the Disk I/O Usage graph to bring up additional detail by disk of the Disk

Response Time, Average Disk Queue Length, Disk Transfer Rate, as well as the average,

minimum, and maximum I/O reads and writes for the processes running during the data

collection session

If you want to narrow down the report to a specific time frame, you can click on a point

in the timeline shown on the report to set the end time of the data displayed You can

click on the magnifying glass to increase or decrease the size of the interval displayed and

click the arrow buttons to move to the next or previous interval For finer control over the

time period displayed, click on the calendar icon to bring up the dialog shown in Figure

39.13 Here, you can set the specific start time and choose an interval (15 minutes or 1, 4,

12, or 24 hours) to display from that start time

The Data Collector reports contain a lot of data, especially if you drill down into the

details There are more details than we have space to get into in this chapter You should

plan to spend some time examining each of these reports by drilling down into the

various details and selecting different time frames and so on to get familiar with what

they have to offer For example, you can drill from the Query Statistics History report to

the individual query details, including the graphical execution plan

FIGURE 39.13 Defining the time frame to display in a data collection report

Managing the Data Collector

To stop collecting performance data for a SQL Server instance, right-click on Data

Collectionin the Managementnode and click Disable Data Collection If you want to stop

a specific data collection set, expand the Data Collectionnode and then expand the

System Data Collection Setsfolder Right-click on the data collection set you want to

stop and select Stop Data Collection Set

You can also force a collection set to gather data and upload statistics manually by

right-clicking on the data collection set and selecting Collect and Upload Now

To check on the status and history of the Data Collectors, you can right click on the Data

Collectionnode and select View Logs This launches the log viewer that displays the

activity that has occurred for each of the data collection sets, such as which collection sets

are active and the collection and upload history of each of the collection sets

Managing the Data Collector in T-SQL

Much of the Data Collector can be managed effectively within SSMS However, if you have

to perform a number of tasks repeatedly, using the wizards and SSMS dialogs can

some-times become tedious Fortunately, the Data Collector provides an extensive collection of

stored procedures that you can use to perform any data collection task In addition, you

can use functions and views to retrieve configuration data from the msdband

manage-ment data warehouse databases, execution log data, as well as the performance data stored

in the management data warehouse

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As with most tools in SSMS, when using the GUI, you can click the Script buttion to

generate a script for the actions being performed This is a great way to become more

familiar with the T-SQL commands and procedures for managing the Data Collector

For example, to enable or disable the Data Collector in a SQL Server instance, you can use

thesp_syscollector_enable_collectorandsp_syscollector_disable_collectorstored

procedures: