What is Pssdiag/Sqldiag Manager?

Pssdiag/Sqldiag Manager is a graphic interface that provides customization capabilities to collect data for SQL Server using sqldiag collector engine. The data collected can be used bySQL Nexus tool  which help you troubleshoot SQL Server performance problems.  This is the same tool Microsoft SQL Server support engineers use to for data collection to troubleshoot customer's performance problems.

Release 12.0.0.1001

What's New

This version support SQL Server 2012 and 2014

Requirements

1. Diag Manager requirements
   • Windows 7 or above (32 or 64 bit)
   • .NET framework 2.0 installed
2. Data collection
   • The collector can only run on a machine that has SQL Server with targeted version (either client tools only or full version) installed

Training

1. Downloading and Installing Diag Manager
2. Configuring and customizing pssdiag packages using Diag Manager
3. Running pssdiag package
4. PSSDIAG performance considerations

How it works

This tool lets you customize what you want to collect and then let you create a data collection package. You extract the package and run SQLdiag data collector engine on the SQL Server you are troubleshooting.

Feature Highlights

1. Powerful data collection capabilities:  The tool relies on SQLdiag collector engine to provide collection of perfmon, profiler trace, msinfo32, errorlogs, Windows event logs, TSQL script output and registry exports.
2. Default templates: You can choose SQL Server version and platform (32 bit or 64 bit). The tool will automatically choose a default template for the combination. This will have default set of perfmon counters, profiler traces.
3. Shipped with ready to use Custom collectors:  Most commonly usedcustom collectors include SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2 performance collector. 
4. Customization/Extensibility:  You can customize what perfmon and profiler trace events you want to collect.   Additionally, you can create your own custom collectors with TSQL Scripts, batch files and utilities.   See customization guide. 
5. Packaging: With a single click of save, the tool will package all your files into a single cab so that you can ship to the machine where you intend to run on. 
6. Integration with SQL Nexus:  The custom collectors shipped will collect data that can be analyzed bySQL Nexus Tool.

Common Tasks

1. Step-by-step tasks:  This page tells you how to use the tool including installation, configuration and running the tool
2. Collecting Data for SQL Nexus.
3. Customization guide:  This page tells you how you can create you own custom collector to use in addition to default collectors shipped.
4. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):  This page will answer most commonly asked questions.
5. Common Issues:  this page will document most commonly encoutered issues and errors

Requirement/Supported Versions

1. Requirements of this configuration tool:
   • .NET framework 2.0 (SQL Server 2005 and 2008 install this by default).  This tool can be easily compiled to target .NET framework version beyond 2.0.  We target 2.0 to minimize .NET framework installation because 2005, 2008 and 2008 R2 all install .NET framework 2.0. 
   • Operating system: Windows 2003 Server/XP and above
2. Requirement of running data collection package:
   • The final data collection package generated by this configuration tool needs to run on a machine that has target SQL Server installed.  For example, if you have configured a package for an SQL Server 2008 instance, it can only run on a machine which SQL Server 2008 is installed.
3. Supported Versions
   • SQL Server 2005
   • SQL Server 2008
   • SQL Server 2008 R2
   • For SQL Server 2012
   • SQL Server 2014