Professional SQL Server® 2005 Performance Tuning

10.3. Replaying a Workload

If the workload has met the Profiler replay requirements and the target server has been fully prepared for processing the workload, replaying a workload is very simple. From SQL Profiler, select File → Open → Trace File → and select a workload file to load into Profiler. From the Profiler menu, select Replay and then choose Start to start replaying. Profiler will bring up a connection screen. Fill in all required information for connecting to a target server, as shown in Figure 10-14.

After the connection is made, you will see a screen similar to Figure 10-15. Click OK, and the replay starts.

Figure 10-15. Figure 10-15

Replaying the same workload on different servers provides a quick way to benchmark server performances for the workload. When you are looking for possible database consolidation opportunities, replaying multiple workloads on a target server may provide valuable information.

This chapter has discussed how to characterize and measure a workload. The rest of the chapter will present three workload-replaying scenarios.

• Scenario 1: This scenario demonstrates the simple use of the replay feature. Using replay time helps analyze the total impact of performance tuning on a workload.

• Scenario 2: In this scenario, we use Profiler to send the workload to different servers. During workload replays, we will observe and compare performances.

• Scenario ...