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Teratrax Performance Monitor Help

Teratrax Performance Monitor is a low-footprint performance monitoring tool for SQL Server. It is designed to help you isolate SQL Server bottlenecks and identify potential problems in your mission critical Microsoft SQL Server databases. Once a SQL Server instance is being monitored by the Monitoring Agent, you can register it in the Performance Viewer to view and analyze its performance data alongside other SQL Server instances in your enterprise.

Installation Guide

The install program in Teratrax Performance Monitor guides you through the installation in simple and easy steps. It installs both Monitoring Agent and Performance Viewer. If you are installing Teratrax Performance Monitor on a client machine and you want the Monitoring Agent to run from the server, install a copy of Teratrax Performance Monitor on the server and use the Monitoring Agent of the server copy to monitor the server locally. Once the server is monitored, you can register it in the Performance Viewer installed on your client machine to view and analyze performance data.

Monitoring Agent can monitor only one SQL Server instance at a time, however, Performance Viewer allows you to view performance information on as many servers as you like. The Server Explorer in Performance Viewer is designed to connect to the various servers in your enterprise that are independently monitored by Monitoring Agent.

Make sure that only one copy of the Monitoring Agent is configured to monitor a specific server. Monitoring the same server from multiple computers running Monitoring Agent will produce inaccurate results and may cause monitoring to stop.

The install program does not require a computer reboot after installation.

Learn more about Monitoring Agent, Performance Viewer, and monitoring multiple SQL Server instances

Learn more about monitoring SQL Server clusters

Upgrading from Version 3.0.0, 3.0.1, or 3.0.2 to Version 3.0.3

Installing version 3.0.3 will automatically update older versions of 3.0 (3.0.0, 3.0.1, and 3.0.2). If you have an older version installed on more than one computer (For example, a copy is installed on the server for Monitoring Agent and another copy on a client for Performance Viewer), you need to run the installation program on all of these computers.

If Monitoring Agent is monitoring a SQL Server instance, the installation program will stop it before applying the update. You need to manually restart Monitoring Agent after installation. Make sure to manually delete (drop) the TPM30 database on the server before restarting Monitoring Agent in order for a new database to be created.

Upgrading from Version 2.0 to Version 3.0

If you are currently using version 2.* of Teratrax Performance Monitor, you need to uninstall it before you can use version 3.0. Uninstall version 2.* using the Uninstall shortcut in the Teratrax program group in the Start menu. Uninstalling a copy of version 2.* from "Add or Remove Programs" in Control Panel does cleanly remove all components from your computer. After uninstalling the older version, you can delete the database manually or keep it if you plan to use the data inside it through the predefined views found inside the database.

Upgrading from Version 1.0 to Version 3.0

If you are upgrading from version 1.0, you can run both versions in parallel. However, Teratrax recommends that you eventually uninstall version 1.0 and move to version 3.0. Version 1.0 does not have historical monitoring so there is no database created on the server.

Permanent Monitoring and Preemptive Actions

Teratrax Performance Monitor is designed to monitor servers permanently and not only during periods of slow performance. The Monitoring Agent accesses the server only once every 5 minutes which makes the overhead on the server negligible. Permanent Monitoring allows you to take preemptive actions to correct performance issues before they become problems. For example, an UPDATE statement that is taking 100 ms today could start taking 10000 ms (10 seconds) or more as the table it updates grows. With permanent monitoring, you can configure Performance Monitor to capture SQL code that takes more than 4,000 ms (4 seconds) to run. Once the update statement reaches the 4 seconds mark, Performance Monitor will capture it and alert you to the problem early on. This way, you can view performance data on your server every week or so to determine which code is now slowing down before somebody complains about it.

The only area that Teratrax does not recommend permanent monitoring for is Process Blocking. By default, detection of blocking is disabled. You can enable block detection for small periods of time. For instance, if you’re suspecting that your applications are causing blocks, you can enable block capturing for a day or so then disable it. Result will be available from that day for you to analyze at any time.

Supported Database Servers

SQL Server 2000 - All Editions
SQL Server 2005 - All Editions

Supported Operating Systems

Windows 2003
Windows XP
Windows 2000 (SP3 or higher; ADO 2.7 or higher)

Hardware Requirements

Intel Pentium III or compatible 600 MHz or higher processor
128 MB of RAM
100 MB of hard disk space

Help Topics

Performance Viewer

     Registering Server Instances in Performance Viewer

     System Utilization

     Slow SQL Code

     Slow/Failed Jobs

     SQL Server Blocking

Monitoring Agent

Monitoring Multiple SQL Server Instances

Monitoring SQL Server Clusters

Data Views