Windows storport enhancement to help troubleshoot IO issues

For Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 you can download a Windows storport enhancement (packaged as a hotfix). This enhancement can lead to faster root cause analysis for slow IO issues. Once you apply this Windows hotfix you can use Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) via perfmon or xperf to capture more detailed IO information that you can share with your storage team. This could be very useful for your SQL Server installations or any system where you suspect IO issues.

Enhancement information and background topics:

· Storport ETW Logging to Measure Requests Made to a Disk Unit https://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2010/04/22/etw-storport.aspx

· Diagnose Slow I/O on Windows With Xperf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-i_EfzadA (from the MSFT guys who wrote it - based on a pre-release version but the basics still apply)

· xPerf: Once I Was Blind and Now I See https://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimmymay/archive/2009/09/08/xperf-once-i-was-blind-and-now-i-see.aspx

· Storport Driver https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff567541(VS.85).aspx

The hotfix downloads are available from the top of each article and instructions are included in the body of each KB:

· KB 979764 (Windows Server 2008 hotfix)

· KB 978000 (Windows Server 2008 R2 hotfix)

· https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/performance/cc825801.aspx (xperf downloads)