Kevin Hill wraps up a series on what to do when “SQL Server is slow”:
This post will lean heavily on the First Responder Kit from Brent Ozar, sp_WhoIsActive from Adam Machanic and others. They took what Microsoft provides and made them better. Hundreds or thousands of hours of work to make FREE things for you to use.
This is the most complex blog I’ve ever written. Your experiences may differ, and my code samples might have some bugs. Test first.
Kevin is trying to sum up a lot of material in a blog post, but this serves as a pretty good starting point for people who don’t know where to begin. One of the key takeaways from the post, and the entire series, is to have a plan in place. Regardless of whether you use what Kevin has as-is or make your own modifications, knowing what to do and how to do it will save a lot of time and energy when you need to act.