The Windows operating system has many tools and commands
that can be used to monitor and diagnose hardware issues
so you can tune your SQL Server solution for optimal performance.
It is important to use the tool most appropriate
for the metrics you want to gather and your processing requirements.
Commonly used tools used for monitoring and tuning hardware include the following:
* Network Monitor Agent
Used to analyse network traffic and diagnose network-related problems
* Performance Logs and Alerts
Used to gather performance-related metrics and to generate an alert
when a gathered metric reaches a user-defined threshold
* System Monitor (perfmon.exe)
Tracks resource usage of various components
of the operating system and installed applications,
such as SQL Server, through an Object/Counter model
* Task Manager
Can be used as a quick way to gather key metrics
about which processes are running on the local SQL Server instance,
the processor utilization, and network utlilization
The primary resources used by a DBA
are the System Monitor and the Performance Logsand Alerts tools.
Source: Microsoft SQL 2005 Administrator's Companion,
Chapter 29 - Database System Tuning
Page 941