There are quite a lot of great tools and queries available to the DBA that aid in troubleshooting and performance tuning. The list is incredibly long, but I mainly use RedGate's SQL Monitor (which has come on in the last 5 years in leaps and bounds), Glenn Berry's DMV queries, Adam Machanic's sp_whoisactive and Brent Ozar Unlimited's sp_Blitz suite (predominantly sp_Blitz and sp_BlitzIndex). In writing this, I see that Brent Ozar has expanded his offering, so it looks like I have a weekend project ahead of me!