Hey Folks! Hope you all had fabulous holiday season 🙂
In this Post let’s see Three fabulous tools which Windows OS offers for testing your Network between your Servers. A typical example for DBA’s would be testing Network Latency between your Prod and DR Server while initial testing of your Mirroring configuration or even looking for latency/Response times when you are copying a huge Backup File from one Server to another Server etc.
Tool 1: PING
This is one of the most used command by any ITÂ professional, irrespective of what he/she does. PING is a very Basic test to verify IP connectivity from one machine to another.
Eg: PING MachineName ; PING IPAddress; PING -T MachineName/IPAddress(T for Continuous ping).
For More Options and Info please visit http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490968.aspx
Tool2: TRACERT
This is another useful tool which traces the entire route(Includes all the Routers/NIC’s involved in your Path) from Source Machine to Destination machine. Â Pretty useful tool.
Eg: TRACERT Machinename
For info on how to interpret those results, please visit http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc940128.aspx
Tool3: PATHPING ( Awesome Tool to have in your ToolKit)
This is one of my all time Favorite tool which basically mixes both PING and TRACERT Results and will provide you with a very detailed/useful information.
Eg: PATHPING MachineName. In this Example I’m doing a Pathping from my Domain Controller to one of the server in my domain. See below on how it looks for the output.
Typically, you would see many Network Interfaces in between(Of Course right…!). Try “PATHPING GOOGLE.COM” from your machine and you can see what I mean. Or Just try PATHPING on one of your Servers in your company, you’ll see what I’m trying to say.
Tip: I typically make use of “>” appended to my command, so that I can save the Output as a report in a text file and I can review later any time or you can simply forward that text file to your Server/Network Team to look into. Please see below for what I’m trying to explain(Basically, it’s something like “SPOOLING”  in Oracle if you are familiar with ORACLE SQLPLUS).
Now it created a Text file called “Output.txt” under my C Drive and the contents are as shown below..
Trust me Guys, PATHPING is one of the most Useful tools we have for free, which many of DBA’s are not aware of, or I should say most ignored Tool by many DBA’s!
Technet has fabulous info on how to interpret results and options available etc here:Â http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc958876.aspx
Hope this Info helps!…
MSSQLTREK 