Performing an analysis
Select a server in the estate list, then use Connect in the Database Servers group of the Advisor tab. If you choose one of the Quick Options below without an open connection, Aireforge Studio asks for the credentials, connects, and starts the analysis in one step. Advisor always runs its checks live against the instance, so pick a quiet time for a broad run on a busy server (see Reducing the impact of Aireforge Studio).
Quick options
The Quick Options group on the ribbon runs a fixed set of checks straight away:
- All runs every check except housekeeping checks.
- Performance, Security, Reliability, Integrity and Excellence each run only the checks in that one category.
Narrowing a run
To choose exactly what runs, open the options screen instead of a Quick Option. It narrows a run in combination:
- By subject, using the Instance, tempdb Specific, Databases and Tables toggles. Turning Tables off removes every table- and index-level check, including all the index findings covered in Index Optimisation.
- By category, using the Performance, Security, Reliability, Data Integrity, Operational Excellence and Incident toggles, matching the Quick Options above.
- By database: with Databases on, select Selected to choose which databases are checked, or All to check every database again.
- By table: with Tables on, select Selected to choose which tables, within your chosen databases, are checked.
- By individual check: turn on Select Specific Checks to tick individual checks from everything available to the job, then use Edit afterwards to change the selection again.
Select Start Analysis to run with the current selection.
Before you rely on a finding
Advisor's checks are general-purpose: they don't know your workload or your maintenance windows. Verify and test each recommendation before applying it, rather than running the generated script straight against a live server.
For more on reading the output, see Viewing the Results.