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Replay Options (SQL Server Profiler)

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Applies to: SQL Server Azure SQL Managed Instance

Before replaying a captured trace with SQL Server Profiler, specify replay options in the Replay Configuration dialog box. To launch this dialog box, open the replay trace file or table in SQL Server Profiler, and on the Replay menu, click Start. For information about what permissions are required to replay a trace, see Permissions Required to Run SQL Server Profiler.

This topic describes the options specified with the Replay Configuration dialog box.

Note

We recommend using the Distributed Replay Utility for replaying an intensive OLTP application (with many active concurrent connections or high throughput). The Distributed Replay Utility can replay trace data from multiple computers, better simulating a mission-critical workload. For more information, see SQL Server Distributed Replay.

Basic Replay Options

Replay server
The server is the name of the instance of SQL Server against which you want to replay the trace. The server must adhere to the replay requirements described in Replay Requirements."

Save to file
The output file where the result of replaying the trace is written for later viewing. By default, SQL Server Profiler displays only the results of replaying the trace on the screen.

Save to table
The database table where the result of replaying the trace is written for later viewing.

Number of replay threads
Specify the number of replay threads to use concurrently. A higher number consumes more resources during replay, but replay is faster. Event ordering is not fully maintained when multiple threads are used.

Replay events in the order they were traced
Allows you to use debugging methods such as stepping through each trace. If this option is not selected, replay does not guarantee that events are replayed in an order that is consistent with the order in which events were originally captured.

Replay events using multiple threads
Optimizes performance and disables debugging. Events are replayed in the order they were recorded for a particular server process ID (SPID), but ordering of SPIDs is not guaranteed.

Display replay results
Display the results of the replay. This is the default option. If the trace you are replaying is very large, you may want to disable this to save disk space.

Note

For best replay performance, we recommend that you select to replay events using multiple threads, and do not select to display the replay results.

Advanced Replay Options

Replay system SPIDs
Replay all SPIDs. This is the default option.

Replay one SPID only
Replays the SPID number you choose from the list.

Limit replay by date and time
Replays the trace for the specified Start time and End time.

Health monitor wait interval
Sets the amount of time a process is allowed to run before the health monitor terminates it.

Health monitor poll interval
Sets how often the health monitor polls candidates for termination.

Enable SQL Server blocked processes monitor
Sets how often the blocked processes monitor searches for blocked or blocking processes.

About the Health Monitor

The health monitor is an application thread that monitors the simulated processes involved in replaying a trace, and ends those processes that are blocked within the replay. In the Advanced Replay Options tab of the Replay Configuration dialog box, you can specify how long the health monitor should wait in seconds before ending a blocked process (Health monitor wait interval). If you set this interval to 0, the health monitor never ends simulated blocking processes in the replaying trace.

See Also

Replay Traces
Replay Requirements
Considerations for Replaying Traces (SQL Server Profiler)