Professional SQL Server® 2005 Performance Tuning

13.2. Performance Dashboard Reports

The Performance Dashboard Reports give you an interactive way to diagnose performance-related problems on a SQL Server instance. The reports take data from the dynamic management and catalog views and give you a graphical overview of the current state of your SQL Server instance.

13.2.1. Prerequisites

The Performance Dashboard Reports leverage new features introduced in SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. Thus, your SQL Server components must be from at least SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 or later.

Service Pack 2 needs to be applied to the Management Tools as well as each SQL Server relational database engine instance that you want to monitor using the Performance Dashboard Reports.

13.2.2. Installing the Performance Dashboard Reports

To install the Performance Dashboard Reports, follow these steps:

1. Download SQLServer2005_PerformanceDashboard.msi from the Microsoft Download Center (www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1D3A4A0D-7E0C-4730-8204-E419218C1EFC&displaylang=en), shown in Figure 13-1.

   Figure 13-1. Figure 13-1

   

2. Save SQLServer2005_PerformanceDashboard.msi (see Figure 13-2).

3. Run SQLServer2005_PerformanceDashboard.msi (see Figure 13-3).

4. Take note of the installation path on the Feature Selection page of the installation wizard (see Figure 13-4).

   The default directory is Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\PerformanceDashboard\ ...