Most significant perfmon counters for MS SQL server

Memory	Available MBytes
Memory	Free System Page Table Entries
Memory	Pages/Sec
Paging File	%Usage
Paging File	%Usage Peak
Processor	Processor Time
Process(sqlservr)	% Privileged Time
Process(sqlservr)	% Processor Time
PhysicalDisk	Avg. Disk sec/Read
PhysicalDisk	Avg. Disk sec/Write
SQLServer:Access Methods	Forwarded Records/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	FreeSpace Scans/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	Full Scans/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	Index Searches/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	Page Splits/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	Scan Point Revalidations/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	Workfiles Created/sec
SQLServer:Access Methods	Worktables Created/sec
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Buffer cache hit ratio
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Checkpoint pages/sec
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Free pages
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Lazy writes/sec
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Page life expectancy
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Page lookups/sec
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Page reads/sec
SQLServer:Buffer Manager	Page writes/sec
SQLServer:Cursor Manager by Type	Cursor Requests/sec
SQLServer:General Statistics	Processes Blocked
SQLServer:Latches	Latch Waits/sec
SQLServer:Latches	Total Latch Wait Time (ms)
SQLServer:Locks	Lock Waits/sec
SQLServer:Locks	Lock Wait Time (ms)
SQLServer:Locks	Lock Timeouts (timeout > 0)/sec
SQLServer:Locks	Number of Deadlocks/sec
SQLServer:Memory Manager	Memory Grants Pending
SQLServer:Memory Manager	Target Server Memory (KB)
SQLServer:Memory Manager	Total Server Memory (KB)
SQLServer:SQL Statistics	Batch Requests/sec
SQLServer:SQL Statistics	SQL Compilations/sec
SQLServer:SQL Statistics	SQL Re-Compilations/sec
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Lock waits
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Log write waits
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Network IO waits
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Non-Page latch waits
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Page IO latch waits
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Page latch waits
SQL Server:Wait Statistics	Wait for the worker