Microsoft SQL Server monitoring - Windows

Bring up the agent configuration application by clicking Start and then Server Density or by clicking its icon in the system tray. Tick the box to enable the monitoring. You may need to set up a custom performance counter prefix if you do not see any metrics coming in after a few minutes.

This article is outdated and will eventually be removed.

Troubleshooting

If you are not seeing any metrics then you should verify you have the performance counters available. 

1. Start Performance Monitor by clicking Start, Run... and typing perfmon
2. Right-click in the performance counter list and click Add Counters...
3. In the Available counters list, scroll until you see a counter that starts with SQLServer such as SQLServer:Access Methods. You do not need to actually add any counters - this is just to verify they exist.
4. If you do not see any metrics available then you do not have the performance counters and they must be installed - this normally happens as part of the SQLServer installation.
5. If you do see the counters but they do not start with SQLServer then you need to set up a custom performance counter prefix.