Save time when contacting Microsoft Support for a SQL-Related issue!
Something I should have blogged about some time ago, to save time to myself to send out information when I help my customer to raise a case with Microsoft Support (or to have a review of the system done by me) and to save time to the customer himself.
When you raise a case with Microsoft Support in fact, unless you are not experiencing a Sev A case, by the time you get contacted by the engineer you might have to wait up to 24 hours as I’ve described already in my blog post SQL Server Support FAQ:
What do the Microsoft Case Severities mean?
From: https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlblog/archive/2007/08/16/sql-server-support-faq.aspx
A – Critical – 1 hour initial response goal
High-impact problem in which production, operations, or development is proceeding but is severely impacted, or where production and/or profitability will be severely impacted within days .
B – Urgent – 4 hour initial response goal
High-impact problem where production is proceeding, but in a significantly impaired fashion.
Time sensitive issue important to long-term productivity that is not causing an immediate work stoppage.
C – Important - 24 hour initial response goal
Important issue which does not have significant current productivity impact for the customer.
D – Monitor
This severity is used for support issues that are waiting, usually to confirm a provided solution or when waiting for an intermittent problem to recur, in order to collect needed data.
So best if you get ready for the time you’ll be contacted and if you start retrieving from your system the first information that generally the engineer will ask you.
Save some time by starting running the following tools\commands:
(SQL 2000 and 2005)
Download and run MPSRPT_sql.exe
Run it on the active node (in case of an active-passive installation), otherwise you have to failover all the instances on one node and run the tool from there.
This will create a folder in %SystemRoot%\MPSReports \SQLServer\rpt\cab, which you need to send back to the engineer as soon as he\she’ll communicate a workspace to you.
Please send just the cab files, not extracted.
Download and run MPSRPT_cluster.exe
Run it on both the nodes.
This will create a folder (one in each node) in %SystemRoot%\MPSReports\Cluster\Report\cab, which you need to send back to the engineer as soon as he\she’ll communicate a workspace to you.
Please send just the cab files, not extracted.
3. For each instance on your SQL Server installation, run sp_configure (with advanced options on)
4. For each database on your SQL Server installation(s), run sp_helpdb
5. For each SQL Server installation, run sp_helpdb
Also, something to be aware of when running MPS Reports on SQL Server 2000 SP4: How to: Run MPS Reports (SQL) on SQL Server 2000 SP4.
- Beatrice Nicolini -