SQL Server Diagnostics (Preview)

EDIT (1/10/2018) : As of yesterday, this preview service was shutdown. SQL Server customers encountering product issues that generate dumps should contact Microsoft CSS for support and guidance.


Today, Microsoft is releasing the SQL Server Diagnostics (Preview) extension within SQL Server Management Studio and Developer APIs to empower SQL Server customers to achieve more through a variety of offerings to self-resolve SQL Server issues.

What this offers to our customers?

Analyze Dumps - Customers using this extension will be able to debug and self-resolve memory dump issues from their SQL Server instances and receive recommended Knowledge Base (KB) article(s) from Microsoft, which may be applicable for the fix. The memory dumps are stored in a secured and compliant manner as governed by the Microsoft Privacy Policy.

For example, Joe, a DBA from Contoso, Ltd., finds that SQL Server has generated a memory dump while running a workload, and he would like to debug the issue. Using this feature, John can upload the dump and receive recommended KB articles from Microsoft, which can help him fix the issue.

 

FAQ:

Q. What version of SQL Server is supported?

Answer: SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014, SQL Server 2016.

Q. What version of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is supported?

Answer: Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2016 or a later version ( SQL Server Management Studio 17.1 ).

If you don't have SSMS installed, please install it from: SQL Server Management Studio

Q. Which process dumps can be uploaded for analysis?

Answer: The dumps we are analyzing are for SQL Server process (sqlservr.exe).

Q. What type of dumps are supported?

Answer: We support mini dumps, filtered dumps and full dumps. The dumps can be of the following types - .dmp, .hdmp, .mdmp.

Q. What are the scenarios in which the dump may have been generated?

Answer:  The dumps could have been generated for exceptions, hangs, non-yielding scheduler and manual.

Q. What SQL Server platforms are supported?

Answer: We support SQL Server on-premise and SQL Server running on VM's.

Q. What is maximum size of the dumps?

Answer: The maximum size of the dumps can be up to 100 GB. If the file size is more than 8 GB we recommend to use LZ4 compression to compress the file before the upload.

Q. How is the recommendation determined?

Answer: The memory dump is analyzed for the root cause like exceptions, assertion or non-yielding schedulers and it is matched with any publicly available fixes for the issue in the form of KB articles.

 

View Recommendations -

Customers will be able to keep their SQL Server instances up-to-date by easily reviewing the recommendations for their SQL Server instances. Customers can filter by product version or by feature area (e.g. Always On, Backup/Restore, Column Store, etc.) and view the latest Cumulative Updates (CU) and the underlying hotfixes addressed in the CU.

 

 

To continue with the previous example, Contoso, Ltd. uses SQL Server 2016, and Joe wants to understand the fixes pertaining to every feature area before he applies the latest CU. Using this feature, he can view all the fixes that are part of the CU across the different SQL Server feature areas. In the future, Joe also wants to receive proactive recommendations, including bug fixes, assessment and migration to latest SQL versions, from Microsoft.

FAQ:

Q. What are the recommendations when I click on View Recommendations ?

Answer: We provide the information on the Latest Cumulative Updates for all supported SQL Server versions -  SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2014, SQL Server 2016.

Developer APIs -

Developers who want to discover and learn about our APIs can view our developer portal and then use our APIs in their custom applications. Developers can log and discuss issues and even submit their applications to the application gallery.

For example, Contoso, Ltd. has a monitoring system in place that detects issues whenever SQL Server generates memory dumps. Using our developer APIs, Joe can now extend the monitoring system to call our APIs to pick up the memory dump, create and send custom alerts, including recommended Knowledge Base (KB) article(s) applicable to the fix, to his extended team.

 

Note:

This extension requires Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2016 or a later version. If you do not have the latest Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) installed, please install it from here.

If you would like to assess database migration to SQL Server from Microsoft Access, DB2, MySQL, Oracle and Sybase please reference this article.

To migrate existing on-premises SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL databases to Azure, whether your target database is Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Database Managed Instance, or Microsoft SQL Server in an Azure virtual machine, learn more about the Azure Database Migration Service. For an opportunity to participate in a limited preview of this service, please submit a nomination.