Jason Brimhall has a three-part series on the types of monitoring built into SQL Server. Part one is an overview and includes the Default Trace:
The default trace by itself is something that can be turned off via configuration option. There may be good reason to disable the default trace. Before disabling the default trace, please consider the following that can be captured via the default trace. I will use a query to demonstrate the events and categories that are configured for capture in the default trace.
Part two looks at the system_health Extended Event session:
Beyond being a component of the black box for SQL Server, what exactly is this event session? The system_health is much as the name implies – it is a “trace” that attempts to gather information about various events that may affect the overall health of the SQL Server instance.
The event session will trap various events related to deadlocks, waits, clr, memory, schedulers, and reported errors. To get a better grasp of this, let’s take a look at the event session makeup based on the available metadata in the dmvs and catalog views.
Part three is the sp_server_diagnostics stored procedure:
Beyond being a component of the black box for SQL Server, what exactly is this diagnostics process? The sp_server_diagnostics is much as the name implies—it is a “diagnostics” service that attempts to gather information about various events that may affect the overall health of the SQL Server instance.
The diagnostics process will trap various server related health (diagnostics) information related to the SQL Server instance in an effort to try and detect potential failures and errors. This diagnostics session/process traps information for five different categories by default. There is a sixth category of information for those special servers that happen to be running an Availability Group.
I’ve used the first two but did not know about the third. Jason goes into good depth on each, showing you the types of information you can get out of these. Read the whole thing.