How to run SQLFrontline

  1. Download SQLfrontline
  2. Get and Set your unique client token
  3. Configure the servers to be checked.
  4. Run a data collection.
  5. Schedule a daily automatic data collection.

1. Download the .zip file from: https://sqlfrontline.blob.core.windows.net/publicinstall/SQLFrontline.zip

Extract the zipped files to a folder on a desktop or laptop (SQLFrontline.exe, updatemanifest.xml, SQLFrontline.exe.config).

There is no install required.

2. Sign up for a demo client key here. Set your client key:

Go to the folder where you downloaded SQLFrontline and run

    SQLFrontline.exe –i “your client key”

This stores your token locally so you don’t have to enter it again. This token is used to identify your collected data.

3. Configure the servers to be analysed:

For each SQL Server instance you want to collect data for, run

    SQLFrontline.exe –E –S “YourServername”

This configures SQLFrontline to use trusted authentication (which is the preferred authentication method).

If you want to use a Username and Password:

    SQLFrontline.exe –S “YourServername” –U “username” –P “password”

(This will store the username and password encrypted using the machine key in a local config file.)

The user that you run SQLFrontline as requires the following SQL Server permissions as a minimum:

VIEW SERVER STATE

VIEW DATABASE STATE

And, ALTER TRACE if you want to diagnose events in the default trace.

If you receive the following error:

A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process. (provider: SSL Provider, error: 0 – The certificate chain was issued by an authority that is not trusted.)

SQLFrontline forces the connections it makes with your SQL Servers to be encrypted. You have 2 options to fix the error.

  1. Install a trusted CA certificate on your SQL Server
  2. Or, add the -T option to the command line to say that you trust the server certificate. This is only recommended for on-premise SQL Servers.

4. To run a data collection manually:

    SQLFrontline.exe –g

5. To schedule an automatic daily data collection (via Windows Task Scheduler):

    SQLFrontline.exe -f Daily -c 15:45

(You will need to run as a user with local admin rights to add a Windows scheduled task).

A recommended time of day to automatically collect data is somewhere between 3pm and 5pm. This is because there is less chance that overnight processes (such as nightly maintenance jobs) will skew the collected data.