Kevin Hill has a few life hacks for us:
Since I am an independent consultant here under the Dallas DBAs name, I am frequently asked to come in and quickly find out why the server is so slow. Sometimes by existing customers, sometimes out of nowhere. Many of these times I cannot make any “permanent” or “lasting” changes, so my go-to is to run sp_whoisactive as a temporary stored procedure (code in link). Works the same, nothing left behind, no corporate policies violated.
Read on for another useful tip.