Mehedi's Earth

Monitoring SQL Server is a critical aspect of database management, ensuring high performance, security, and availability. Though SQL Server has some built-in tools and commands, but you will not get any consolidate view or resolution from them. This article series explores a tool that can help you to monitor the performance and gain actionable insights of your SQL Server environment without putting extra load on your bank account.

First Responder Kit

Thanks to Brent Ozar and his team who developed the First Responder Kit, a free and open-source utility. It is designed to perform rapid health checks, identifies configuration problems, performance bottlenecks, and security risks in just a few minutes.

Download Link

You can download the First Responder Kit directly from Github or Brent Ozar's official site.

Installation

Unzip the downloaded folder and open the Install-All-Scripts.sql in SSMS. Select the master database and execute the query. It will install all the required stored procedures if they don't already exist, or update them to the current version if they do exist.

Installed Scripts

First Responder Kit comprises of couple of stored procedure, namely:

• sp_Blitz - covers server-wide health check
• sp_BlitzFirst - does the performance check
• sp_BlitzCache - reveals the queries causing the wait
• sp_BlitzIndex - checks indexes that’d help queries
• sp_BlitzLock - analyzes deadlocks
• sp_BlitzWho, sp_WhoIsActive - shows the currently running qruery
• sp_DatabaseRestore - restores a database  

Last Words

In next part of this article series, your will learn how to be a master of each of the above stored procedures. Stay tuned!

Next Part - sp_Blitz.