How Long Since Restart

A one-line query that returns the SQL Server instance's last restart time.

Published Sep 20, 2010

How long has the server been up? Session 1 is the first system process, and its login_time is the instance start. One query gives you the restart time - handy for interpreting cumulative DMV counters like wait stats or I/O stats.

SELECT
    login_time
FROM
    sys.dm_exec_sessions
WHERE
    session_id = 1