Another question I asked at my pre-con seminar last week at PASS in Seattle troubled me somewhat. This question was “How many people currently collect Wait Stats.” Just a few people raised their hands out of about 105 in total. While you do have to keep in mind that this session was for people wanting to know more about performance monitoring it was still a very low percentage. Collecting Wait Stats is such a simple task and has virtually no overhead. Reporting on it is easy as well. So easy in fact that together with the wealth of information Wait Stats can give you there is no excuse for not collecting these figures on a regular basis. So if you are not I have to say shame on youJ.  I won’t go into details about how to collect or analyze these since the SQL Server Customer Advisory Team has a new web site full of information on subjects just like this and a lot more. If you haven’t checked out this site yet you should make it a priority.  This is going to be one of the most popular SQL Server sites in a very short time when it comes to performance and scalability tips and documentation.  Wait Stats were just a teaser to get you interested so don’t stop there, enjoy all the great documentation.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/default.mspx