Couple of days back Microsoft released BPA for SQL 2012.There are no major changes which I could catch within the tool and the whole install,scanning looked similar to the earlier version.SQL Server 2012 Best Practices Analyzer will offer scanning of both local computer and remote machines.
You would need Microsoft Baseline Config Analyzer 2.0 to use BPA,and we will scan the instance using Baseline config tool.
Both tools are available to download –
We will get good amount of real valuable info using BPA and its pretty neat.
One of the interesting errors which I noted was related to Memory being paged out.I ran BPA on a virtual box with no instance level settings changed to simulate what best BPA is going to offer.
Category: Configuration
Source: localhost
Issue: The event log has messages that indicate that “Significant Portion of SQL Server Memory Has Been Paged Out”
EventId: 17890 Occurrence(s): 95 Last Occurred: 04/11/2012 11:05:31
WorkingSetOfSQLServerInstance – 110844
AvailablePhysicalMemory – 385012
TotalPhysicalMemory – 4193280
SystemMemoryState – Available physical memory is high
Impact: The performance and responsiveness of SQL Server services and associated applications may be affected when the processes are paged out
Conclusion
You have to use BPA in your environments and trust me,this will really help you to isolate issues well before it becomes a problem.