What types of IO does SQL trace display?

Question

Are they physical or logical IOs? If they're logical, is there a way to break it out similar to STATISTICS IO for a production server?

Answer 1

If you mouse over the column in the SQL Profiler you will see the definition:

"Number of Logical Disk Reads Performed...."

You can get physical IOs from perfmon and then merge the data together.

They would be under the process object. Be sure to pick the correct sqlservr process - not really sure how you figure that out - perhaps using sysinternals process explorer to see what .exe file is running. Then look at the process ID and figure out which one was started first. Not sure if lower numbers are released and a newer process could get a lower number.

You can merge the trace and the perfmon file inside the trace viewer. File > Import Performance Data.

Make sure you get the start time in your trace or I'm not sure it will work. You must also reopen the trace before the import option is available.

Answer 2

Not as useful as getting physical IO from a trace, but this article helped me out. Shows you how to get physical IO from sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats.

http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/PAUL/post/How-to-examine-IO-subsystem-latencies-from-within-SQL-Server.aspx