Understanding Your MS SQL Server Summary Log

The Microsoft SQL Server Summary.txt log is created when SQL Server installations, uninstallations, feature changes, and product updates are applied.

Hello, my name is Curt. I'm a Senior Principal Engineer working with the GSE Team.

This video is dedicated to discussing the Microsoft SQL Server Summary Log. Where it is located, what information it contains, and why it can aid us in troubleshooting Microsoft SQL Server installations. So to get to the log we have to go through file explorer to actually go to the location and find the contents of it.

So if we're going to ‘Program Files’, ‘Microsoft's SQL Server’ when we get to the installation directory for SQL we have several folders. In this example we have ‘80’, ‘90’, ‘110’, ‘150’, these all represent versions of SQL Server throughout the years.

For instance ‘80’ is SQL 2000, ‘90’ is 2005, ‘10’ is 2012 and ‘150’ is SQL 2019. So these particular files include binaries that allow SQL Server to have what we call backward compatibility. A database that was designed for previous versions can be run in 2019.

Also what we find in ‘150’ is the summary log. So we go into ‘150’ and regardless of the installation of SQL Server - you can have multiple installations - if you have an older insulation for instance like 2017, the summary information for an insulation for any kind of feature change it will also be included in this ‘Setup Bootstrap’ directory in the latest version of SQL Server.

So drilling down we have a ‘Log’ directory in the ‘Setup Bootstrap’ directory for SQL and getting in here we will see a summary log at the very bottom of my long list of logs here. As we continue to add new instances of SQL, as we continue to install customer updates, as we make changes to any installation of SQL there will be new folders created with that installation or uninstallation information.

There is a general summary text log that does exist, and usually it will give us some of the latest information available in reference to any activity that may have performed along the lines of installs, uninstalls or feature changes. Now as far as trying to troubleshoot, if we have an issue where a SQL installation is failing the summary log is one of the critical elements that we need to reference to get information.

We're not going to go through every detail of this log, but there is general information that you will see relative to the install.

If you don't know anything about the install operation itself, for instance in this example we had an update that was applied, it was a customer update and it updated the database engine the replication portion of SQL and it did this for multiple installations.

You can also run down the update number, so beneficial information, especially if we're troubleshooting a customer update install that's failing.

Something you need to understand and know, there are multiple summary logs that exist, so we also have an example of a failed installation. It was created, artificially created in order to try to create some information relative to what you might see in a failure scenario. We have a case where we were attempting to install SQL 2019 .and

I simply killed the process about a minute into the install. One of the things the summary log is good for doing is giving me information about why the failure occurred.

So, setup was cancelled before completing the operation, so it makes complete sense, but if you have that scenario where you have no idea what has occurred the summary log will be critical to give you feedback on what may have happened to result in a failed installation.

Of course once again I wanted this to fail, so I created a failure situation myself, but if you're troubleshooting SQL Server this can be very beneficial to help you try to figure out why the failures occurred. So this concludes our look at the SQL Server summary log.

I hope this video has helped you understand where to find the log and how it can help in troubleshooting Microsoft SQL Server installations.

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