SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard

SQL Server Performance Dashboard is a handy set of reports which I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to dig a little deeper into SQL Server. Requires SQL Server 2005 SP2 or above.

You can download the Performance Dashboard here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1d3a4a0d-7e0c-4730-8204-e419218c1efc&displaylang=en

Here are a couple of screenshots showing the installation process:




By default, the dashboard report files install to
c:\program files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\PerformanceDashboard\



To complete the setup process, locate the setup.sql script in the PerformanceDashboard folder and run it against the server you wish to monitor.



Right click on the server, go to reports and then custom reports.
The best place to start is performance_dashboard_main.rdl. From this report you can navigate to all of the others.



So that's it for the installation - there are some really good reports to browse straight out of the box.
In my next post I will write about some of the more interesting metrics available through the performance dashboard.