For those of us useing the SQL Server Health and History Tool (a.k.a. SQLH2) version 2.026 was released on 19 May 2005.
A free download from Microsoft, the SQL Server Health and History Tool (SQLH2) collects information about your SQL Server installations. Details about which services/features are installed; configuration of the machine, OS and SQL Server; database size and objects; and additionally it can track Perfomance Counters.
Pre-built reports for Reporting Services are also available. Making it easy to view your existing configuration, and if you setup SQLH2 to collect information regularly, you will have a history of changes.
This new version, also has better documentation of the SQLH2 database, so you can build your own reports. Search microsoft.com for “SQLH2_Repository_Documentation.zip”
If you’re not already using this tool to monitor the history of your SQL Server installations, I’d seriously recommend checking it out. Run it once a day (or more if you collect a lot of performance data) for a month, and check out the tracking it can show.
The performance stats can take a little space (use the SQL Datasizer Tool to predict how much space will be needed) but I’m sure an Analysis Cube would suffice for long term tracking.