I have been working recently in making sure that max memory is configured for the hundred plus database servers I support. In reading numerous books, blog post and attending various talks on memory management people reference the OS memory counter “Available Mbytes” a lot. Various references state that this value should be between 150 and […]
Category: SQL Tuning
What is Page Life Expectancy (PLE) in SQL Server
Being a production DBA means having to quickly look at a SQL Server and diagnose issue with it. We know that a quick look at perfmon or task manager can tell us of high CPU usage, but what is a good way to quickly look at proper memory usage. Checking out the Page Life Expectancy […]
Performance Impact from Page Splits
Recently I was brought in to help troubleshoot performance issues on a database server. Going through my typical check list I noticed memory pressure on the box and made the recommendationof more memory which was simple to fix. What caught my attention though was that blocking was occurring on a transaction that was trying to […]
When Things That Are Supposed to Protect You Try to Kill You
This past week I was presented with a very unique issue. A call came in with a production issue on a tier one application. Unfortunately it was on a system that utilizes SQL 2000 SP4. Having a rather small toolset to use for support I had to rely on Perfmon, sysprocesses and the usual old […]
IOPS versus Throughput – Measuring Performance of Your Storage
Working on a recent consulting job, I was asked to explain the difference in throughput, which is, measured in MB/s versus IOPS as I had recommended a storage array that would provide many more IOPS and throughput than what is currently in use. For this client I had presented the expected IOPS per type of […]
File Extensions for SQL Server Database Files
I was reading an article over the weekend where the author pointed out that the standard naming convention for SQL Server database files was .MDF for the data file, LDF for the log file and NDF for additional data files. This was good stuff so far, then the author stated that these can be changed […]
Turn on Instant File Initialization for SQL Server Performance – With Video Demo
Without Instant File Initialization turned on, each time a data file on SQL Server 2005 and above is created or has to grow in size, the file or portion of the file added must be zeroed out. Depending on the size of the file this can be a very time consuming task. By turning on […]
Turn on Instant File Initialization for SQL Server Performance
Without Instant File Initialization turned on, each time a data file on SQL Server 2005 and above is created or has to grow in size, the file or portion of the file added must be zeroed out. Depending on the size of the file this can be a very time consuming task. By turning on […]