What I learned today – the RELOG utility
At the Chicago SQL User group meeting on 1/14/2010 John Jones of NetApp gave a talk on storage performance. it was an informative meeting. For instance, did you know that the latency of a 15K Fibre Channel drive is the same as a 15K SAS drive? But SAS drives are smaller; NetApp is able to put 24 drives in a 4U rack.
During the presentation, John mentioned the RELOG utility and how it can convert a perfmon counter log from the default .blg extension to a .csv file. I’d never heard of RELOG before so I did a little reading up on it. I googled RELOG and found lots of information. The sources I used for this article were Ask The Performance Team, Microsoft TechNet, and this blog post at My Torn Data Pages. And I found that RELOG can do much more than just reformat a file. It can also filter the original counter log to show data from a sample time slice or only pull out certain counters.
RELOG is a command line utility. It’s available in Windows XP or higher machines, and it’s located in the \system32 directory. If you don’t have it you can get from Microsoft downloads. Also the utility isn’t just for SQL counters. you can run it against any perfmon counter file.
Here’s a list of the switches that RELOG uses:
In my examples I’m using a benchmark counter log I capture from our production servers. It’s already saved as a .csv file so I don’t need to convert it but I certainly could if I needed to. Also I’m typing RELOG in caps, though it’s not necessary.
Using RELOG with just the filename of the counter log will give you the start and end time of the capture plus the number of samples in the file…
…and using the –q switch will list the counters used in the file. 
Adding the –o switch and specifying a file name will output the counter names to a separate file (RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv –q –o counters.txt).
So now that I know the times and the counters in my baseline, I can filter for the counters between 9 and 10 AM on 1/5(RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv -b “1/5/2010 9:00:00AM” -e “1/5/2010 10:00:00 AM” –f csv -o SQL1_filtered.csv). I can see that I’ve filtered out most of the sampling and now I’ve got the 237 samples I took between 9 and 10.
And I can also filter by individual counters.Let’s say I want to see the transactions per second against a specific database between 9 and 10 AM: RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv -b “1/5/2010 9:00:00AM” -e “1/5/2010 10:00:00 AM” -c “\MSSQL$MISDB:Databases(tempdb)\Transactions/sec” –f csv -o SQL1_filtered2.csv. Running this, I see the same 237 samples returned, but if I open the file, I’ll just see the counters I asked for:
I can also use a wild card to see the transactions/sec counters against all databases: RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv -b “1/5/2010 9:00:00AM” -e “1/5/2010 10:00:00 AM” -c “\MSSQL$MISDB:Databases(*)\Transactions/sec” –f csv -o SQL1_filtered3.csv
I haven’t tried to save the results to a database yet. According to My Torn Data Pages, there’s a problem with the syntax cited by Microsoft TechNet. I want to test both scenarios, using a DSN and the Native Client.
Using the RELOG utility – Part 2
In my previous post (What I Learned Today – the RELOG utility) I discussed what I discovered the first time I learned about the RELOG utility. In this post I’ll continue with my education. Again, I’ve used Ask The Performance Team, Microsoft TechNet, and this blog post at My Torn Data Pages as my references.
I found that I could output a list of counters from a perfmon counter log using RELOG (RELOG counterfilename –q –o counterfilename). But you can take that a step further. Simply edit your counter file and delete the counters you don’t want. Then rerun RELOG and use the –cf switch to import a list of counters to filter for. My examples use the same counter log file as before:
RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv – q –o counters.txt — to get my list of counters
RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv –cf counters.txt –c csv –o filtered1.csv — to filter by those counters after editing the counters.txt file.
And of course I can still filter by time with the –b and –e switches:
RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv –cf counters.txt -b “1/5/2010 9:00:00AM” -e “1/5/2010 10:00:00 AM” –f csv -o filtered2.csv
You can save your settings in a config file…
[cf]
counters.txt
[b]
1/5/2010 9:00:00AM
[e]
1/5/2010 10:00:00AM
[f]
csv
[o]
configresults.csv
…and use just the –config switch
RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv –config relogconfig.txt
Now there’s plenty of ways to filter your perfmon files. The last way is to save the results in a SQL database.
Inserting into a SQL database
The –o switch specifies where to output the results of a perfmon counter log file. You have the option to export to a flat file, which I’ve been doing so far, or directly to a database. And that’s simple. First, create a DSN pointing to the server and database of your choice. Stan Segers, whose blog I’ve been referencing atMy Torn Data Pages, is correct in noting that you need to use the SQL Driver. Like Stan, I wasn’t able to connect if I chose the SQL Native Client. Then, when you use the –o switch, specify SQL: and the name of your DSN. In the example my counter name is Counters.
RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv –cf counters.txt –o:SQL:Counters
RELOG will create these 3 tables:
The tables are created the first time you run RELOG to that database. The utility generates a GUID for each run. Each time you run it it will insert records into the CounterDetails and CounterData tables. But it won’t insert into or update the DisplayToID table. So to keep a record of each time you run the utility, specify a different DisplayString. Everything after the exclamation point (!) is the string.
RELOG SQL1_20100106.csv –cf counters.txt –o:SQL:Counters!DCICHISQL1
Now that all my performance counters are in the database, I can easily query against them.
I hope I’ve shown you ways to use the RELOG utility. As you can see, it’s pretty powerful.
VM.Blog. 