Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
By default, the cabinet i le generated is located at
C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Pssdiag\
Customer
with the name
pssd.cab
. This cabinet i le stores all the necessary supporting i les
required to collect the data for all the enabled data collectors coni gured by you. The
pssd.cab
i le
can now be copied to the target machine from which you want to collect the diagnostic data.
When you extract the cabinet i le, you will i nd a
pssdiag.cmd
i le, which calls the SQLdiag execut-
able to collect data using the
PSSDIAG.XML
coni guration i le. Before you start the data collection,
you need to modify the
PSSDIAG.XML
i le, changing the
ssver
value to 11 from 10.50, as shown in
the following example. This directs the SQLdiag utility to collect diagnostic data from a SQL Server
2012 instance.
<Instance name='MSSQLSERVER' windowsauth='true'
ssver=”11”
user=''>
Now you are all ready to collect diagnostic data using SQLdiag by executing the
pssdiag.cmd
,
which is a DOS batch command i le, to start the data collection.
WARNING
If you had a SQL Server instance from a release earlier than SQL
Server 2012 already installed on the machine before the RTM version of
SQL Server 2012 was installed, then you need to do one of two things. Either
edit your environment
PATH
variable to ensure that the SQL Server 2012
SQLdiag path precedes any other directories containing older versions of the
SQLdiag executable, or modify
pssdiag.cmd
and hard-code the SQL Server
2012 SQLdiag path.
EMPLOYING BEST PRACTICES
Now that you have learned the intricacies of using SQLdiag, this section describes a set of best prac-
tices that will not only help you collect the right set of data, but also help you minimize the perfor-
mance overhead of data collection on the target SQL Server instance(s).
One common best practice is to keep multiple coni gurations of the
pssd.cab
i le already coni gured
for various scenarios, such as high CPU usage, SQL Server timeouts, long-running queries, and so
on. This enables you to avoid the hassle of coni guring the data collection during a crisis situation.
All you would need to do is extract the contents of the cabinet i le into a folder and make changes to
the
PSSDIAG.XML
coni guration i le for the
Machine Name
,
Instance Name
, and
ssver
values. After
this quick modii cation is done, you are ready to collect your required diagnostic data.
WARNING
Do not mix-and-match SQLdiag/PSSDIAG coni guration i les sent
by Microsoft CSS engineers with those you have generated with the public
version of the Diag Manager UI. This can lead to unwanted errors, as Microsoft
engineers might add other custom diagnostics to the data collection utility
based on the issue they were troubleshooting on your servers, whose supporting
i les are not available in the version of Diag Manager you downloaded from
CodePlex.
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