Over the past month (plus or minus a couple days), Erik Darling churned out dozens of posts to show how he uses different SQL Server Community Tools that are free and open source to troubleshoot SQL Server issues. You should read all of them. I did. (I also shamelessly copy/pasted this intro, plus the below, directly from his blog.)

Here’s the full list of posts:

• SQL Server Community Tools: Capturing Blocking With sp_HumanEvents
• SQL Server Community Tools: Capturing Query Performance Problems With sp_HumanEvents
• SQL Server Community Tools: Capturing Which Queries Are Compiling With sp_HumanEvents
• SQL Server Community Tools: Capturing Which Queries Are Recompiling And Why With sp_HumanEvents
• SQL Server Community Tools: Capturing Query Wait Stats With sp_HumanEvents
• SQL Server Community Tools: Using sp_QuickieStore To Find Your Worst Performing Queries
• SQL Server Community Tools: How To Filter What sp_QuickieStore Shows You
• SQL Server Community Tools: How To Find Specific Queries With sp_QuickieStore
• SQL Server Community Tools: Formatting sp_QuickieStore Output So It’s Easier To Understand
• SQL Server Community Tools: How To Dig Deeper With Expert Mode With sp_QuickieStore
• SQL Server Community Tools: Detecting CPU Pressure In SQL Server With sp_PressureDetector
• SQL Server Community Tools: Detecting Memory Pressure In SQL Server With sp_PressureDetector
• SQL Server Community Tools: sp_PressureDetector Shows You Running Queries Taking Up CPU And Memory
• SQL Server Community Tools: sp_PressureDetector Doesn’t Show You Irrelevant Waits
• SQL Server Community Tools: Why Does sp_PressureDetector Make A Big Deal About The Remote DAC?
• SQL Server Community Tools: How To Use sp_WhoIsActive To Get Memory Grant Information
• SQL Server Community Tools: Using sp_WhoIsActive To Track Down Implicit Transactions
• SQL Server Community Tools: Changing The Output Of sp_WhoIsActive In Different Ways
• SQL Server Community Tools: Filtering sp_WhoIsActive Results
• SQL Server Community Tools: How I Log sp_WhoIsActive To A Table
• SQL Server Community Tools: How I Use sp_Blitz
• SQL Server Community Tools: How I Use sp_BlitzFirst
• SQL Server Community Tools: How I Use sp_BlitzIndex
• SQL Server Community Tools: How I Use sp_BlitzCache
• SQL Server Community Tools: How I Use sp_BlitzLock

I don’t know anybody who works harder at giving you free SQL Server training than Erik does. (That part I didn’t copy/paste from his blog.)