Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

preetamz — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:46:17 GMT

This is Good tool, and most important thing...It is cmd based which makes things much easier you know, that going through GUI and wait till that page with intensive graphic tools gets loaded. BTW my report.xml file was under C:\perflogs\Report\File\Current\

What are the possibility of using this tool remotely, you know I can't keep this installing on every server.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Jason — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:22:27 GMT

I am having trouble getting the trending to work. It never sends anthing to the SQL server

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:32:13 GMT

Preetamz, dont see a way to use this remotely as the dlls need to run locally on the system. Since it is an MSI package you can deploy it remotely using many difernet methods like GPO and SMS.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:32:45 GMT

Jason, installing SPA install a CHM file which has detailed information on how to setup trending correctly. Check that out.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

John — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:05:34 GMT

Has anyone installed this on a TS server? When I look at the reports the data is missing?

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:47:19 GMT

Sounds like its not compiling the data. I'd look in the directory where the data resides for the reprot.xml file if its not there its not compiling.

Easises tthing to do first is to run: "spacmd compile *" and see if anything is generated.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Michael — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:49:16 GMT

The chm file is not very detailed at all. How is the DB supposed to be setup in terms of the tables? Is there something being assumed here or has something failed during the install process for me?

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 08:04:19 GMT

Yep sounds like the install didnt land Michael. If it did you would see the SPA info in SQL.

Hey Admins! Taking some of the pain out of analyzing perfmon captures.

Brad Rutkowski's Blog — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:03:23 GMT

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) tool Project Description: Ever have a performance problem, but don't

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Nev — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:05:10 GMT

Did anyone ever get trending to work. I have setup up report trending as instructed in the chm file however the sql db is never populated...

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:16:10 GMT

Any events in eventvwr.msc that are SPA related, they migth give you some clues. We got it working interally for sure.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

John Thompson — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:29:14 GMT

I have used SPA to analyse a couple of servers and it was excellent. Now I want to role it out to a few more and configure it with different roles. However I have tried to setup a data/report configuration and I cannot get the report server to pick up the files. I have created a transfer share, set the role and the generate setting but no joy. Any ideas would be appreciated.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:38:40 GMT

Hi John the only thing I can think of is that the SPA jobs run under the system account of each machine, you need to create a group that includes all these machines and give that group read/write/modify perms on the reporting server. Or run the SPA scheduled jobs under an account which has rights to write to the reporting server.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Tom Kasmir — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:56:57 GMT

I've got the tool setup and running nicely, and now want to graduate from storing reports locally on the few servers I'm piloting, to sending all data to a dedicated Report Server running SQL Express 2005.

If everything is set up properly (SPA server roles, designating the correct SQL Server name, databse, and account the Data Collector jobs will run under, etc.) is it enough to just designate the database name and SQL server name and expect that SPA and SQL on the Report server will create the tables first time the Transfer data is fetched from a remote SPA Data server?

I have zilch experience with SQL but did quickly figure out how to enable TCP and Named Pipes. I do see in Event Viewer that the SPA Data Server is successfully logging on to SQL Express each time I manually start a collection job, but the data never leaves the Transfer folder on the SPA Data Server.

I created a new database in SQL Express and ensured that is the db name the job is supposed to send its data to. I am wondering if SPA is expected to create the tables in that database with the first upload of data, or if I'm supposed to do more than just create an empty database?

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:39:10 GMT

Tom, check the SPA CHM file, that has the exact steps you need to get the SQL trending working.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Nev — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:12:19 GMT

Tom - I can see your posts all over the web asking for help on this issue. Any luck? I too can't seem to get this working. The chm file is useless since it doesn't give any detailed instructions. Unless you can do that for us here Brad?

Thanks.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Tom — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:41:24 GMT

Hi Nev.

You must be in the same boat as me.

There is no useful information I can find on setting up SQL to work with SPA, least of all in the SPA CHM. So as far as I'm concerned SPA Trending will have to wait until someone with the proper know-how posts some documentation, but in the meantime I am having fun with SPA basic.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brian — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:52:14 GMT

Hello Brad,

Thanks for the info. My question is does

this "replace" perfomance monitor as far as setting a baseline for server system performance and day-forward monitoring of server performance? I was trying to set up performance counters for specific server roles such as file, print, domain controller, email, database(DOn't think DB is possiblebased on some previos questions) and web server when I came across this utiliy. Should I still go ahead and configure performance logging or is

Server Performance Advisor a turn-key solution? Any help, suggestions and advice would be greatly appreciated.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brad Rutkowski — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:04:29 GMT

Hi Brian. I think for true trending purposes perfmon is still the correct choice (Or MOM :)). SPA is good for trending against a small number of systems but lrage number might be a bit cumbersome.

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

Brian — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:29:02 GMT

Hello Brad,

Thanks for your help. Would you recommend that I use the counters in SPA as a baseline for setting up the counters in performance monitor (Based on each server role, of course.)? If not, do you know of a resource that list recommended counters for different servers roles?

Thank You,

Sincerely,

Brian

re: Great tool for Windows 2003: Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

AP — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:55:40 GMT

Hi all,

As stated in the help file I think you def need SQL 2000 or the MSDE.

Struggled with SQL 2005 until reverting to SQL 2000 install and the SPA DB was then created first time!

Interacting with Data Collector Sets via Powershell

Brad Rutkowski's Blog — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:30:19 GMT

Background: In an earlier post I talked about some new features for Windows 2008 and Vista.  One