SharePoint Diagnostics Tool v1.0 (SPDiag) Released

There is a new GUI utility published today to Microsoft.com/downloads for x32 and x64 environments which should help cut down the ping pong performance related troubleshooting discussions between IT staff, support, and developers regarding the SharePoint farm itself. Use the tool to collect data from performance counters, ULS log files, IIS log files, event logs, and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), and then display and analyze the data in snapshots and custom reports.  You can read more about the SPDiag tool in the SPDiag User Guide . 

Description of the tool directly from the SPDiag User guide:

The SharePoint Diagnostic tool (SPDiag) version 1.0, included with the latest release of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit, was created to simplify and standardize troubleshooting of SharePoint Products and Technologies, and to provide a unified view of collected data. SharePoint Products and Technologies administrators can use SPDiag to gather relevant information from a farm, display the results in a meaningful way, identify performance issues, and export the collected data and reports for analysis by Microsoft support personnel.

The SharePoint Products and Technologies platform is highly complex and can be used for a wide variety of uses. Deploying, managing, and troubleshooting SharePoint Products and Technologies requires extensive knowledge spanning multiple technology areas, including security, networking, such Web technologies as ASPX, and SQL Server.

Traditionally, SharePoint Server troubleshooting involves manually collecting a wide array of data from servers in the affected farm, and then manually analyzing the data to determine the source of the problem. This process can be complex and time-consuming, and data collection itself can place a significant load on the servers.

SPDiag is designed to collect and review data from SharePoint Products and Technologies Web servers, application servers, and SQL servers, and store the collected data for each project in a SQL Server database for retrieval and analysis. SPDiag can collect performance data from IIS logs, ULS logs, and performance counters, and can also collect live data from the servers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Data can then be displayed in the Trends pane of the SPDiag interface and filtered to reveal trends, bottlenecks, and other performance issues that would otherwise require significant manual data processing to uncover. You can also view the individual components and the logical structure of the farm in the Snapshot pane.

SPDiag operates in the context of a project, which is the container used to store collected data for a specific farm. Each project has its own database, and you can create many projects for a single farm, subject only to database server resource limitations. Projects can be saved and reopened again at a later time, and new data can be added to a project between SPDiag sessions. You cannot move data between projects, and you cannot collect data from more than one farm in a single project. Because all SPDiag project data is stored in a SQL Server database, you can back up a project database or move it to another database server.

SPDiag can be used in online or offline modes. In online mode, SPDiag is installed on a Web server belonging to the farm you want to troubleshoot. This allows SPDiag to connect to the farm and collect data. In offline mode, SPDiag is installed on a computer that is not a part of a farm. It can only be used to review existing SPDiag projects, and cannot collect data.

You can export collected data and reports as data files, which can then be sent to Microsoft support technicians for analysis. This can help to facilitate remote troubleshooting by ensuring that the required data is captured on-site, and by consolidating the data in a standardized format.