Download the app and extract it to your local drive, like c:\temp. You don’t have to run this on the SQL Server itself – you can run it from any desktop or laptop with at least .NET 4.5.2. Then, to gather diagnostic data on one of your servers, go to a command prompt and run:

Windows authentication:

AppName.exe --datasource MyServerName

SQL Server authentication:

AppName.exe --datasource MyServerName --userid MyUserName --password MyPassword

If you use tricky characters in your server name, user name, or password, like quotation marks or spaces, you’ll need to surround it with double quotes. For example, if my password is @#!, I might want to use “@#!”.

It’ll take about 5-15 minutes to run a bunch of DMV queries, and when it’s done, check out the Output folder. There’s a zip file with your server’s data.

By default, it runs a relatively limited set of queries. When you’re working hands-on with a client’s server yourself, and you want even more, add –deepdive (that’s two dashes, not one) as a parameter, and it’ll run more. If you go into the Resources folder, you’ll see the queries it runs: things like sp_Blitz, sp_BlitzCache, sp_BlitzIndex, and other utility queries we’ve written over the years.

When it’s done, the output folder will have a zip file (plus a folder with the contents of the zip file.) Start with the spreadsheet – it’s chock full of diagnostic data organized in tabs.