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Hardware Configuration

Server Sizing for SQL Server

This post from Joe Chang covers the process of sizing and selecting components for a database server. He pays special attention to processors. A great comment exchange between Joe and Linchi Shea at the end of the post ... Source : Joe Chang - SQLblog.com - Blog Post

Maximum Performance, Minimum Cost

Great article from sqlmag.com that discusses the building of a prototype high performance server from commodity parts. The final product is a system that claims to compete with mega servers costing 20 times the price ... Source : SQLMag.com

(More) Maximum Performance, Minimum Cost

Great thread discussing how to achieve the best disk performance for a data warehouse system using locally attached storage instead of SAN disk, using low end servers from Dell and HP ... Source : SQL-Server-Performance.com

SQL Server 2008 Hot Add CPU

Another new feature in SQL Server 2008 is the ability to dynamically add CPU's to a running system without downtime. In this blog post, Paul provides an overview and disccusses some of the requirements ... Source : Paul S Randal - SQLskills.com - Blog Post

Issues with Hyperthreading CPU's

Our customers observed very interesting behavior on high end Hyperthreading (HT) enabled hardware {another blog on hyperthreading issues from Kevin Kline} ... Source : Slava Osk - Blog Post

Where does Time Go?

Linchi blogs about a whitepaper from 1999. He writes .... "The key conclusion of the paper is that when data is memory resident, the main bottleneck to the DBMS performance is L2 data cache misses, and to some extent L1 instruction cache misses. This conclusion appears to be valid even with today’s commercial DBMSs, given that the conclusion is still being quoted in recently published studies. If you are interested in the DBMS performance with respect to processors and memory hierarchies, I highly recommend this paper" Update : Linchi blogs about an update to this paper using more recent CPU technology... Source : Linchi Shea - SQLblog.com - Blog Post

Dedicated Network Adapter for Tape Archival

Joe argues the case for a dedicated backup NIC to reduce the network congestion for application users ... Source : Joe Chang - SQLBlog.com

Jim Gray's Home Page

Jim Gray (RIP) was a researcher and manager of Microsoft Research's eScience Group who had a long-standing interest in building super computers with commodity components, thereby reducing the cost of storage, processing, and networking by factors of 10x to 1000x over low-volume solutions ... Source : Research.Microsoft.com

NUMA

Understanding Non Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is non-uniform memory access (NUMA) aware, and performs well on NUMA hardware without special configuration. As clock speed and the number of processors increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to reduce the memory latency required to use this additional processing power. To circumvent this, hardware vendors provide large L3 caches, but this is only a limited solution. NUMA architecture provides a scalable solution to this problem. SQL Server 2005 has been designed to take advantage of NUMA-based computers without requiring any application changes ... Source : Microsoft.com - MSDN Article

Scaling Heavy Network Traffic

This post is cool for two reasons; Firstly, it talks about Network Card Affinity, used in setting the ETL world record. Secondly, it has a screen shot of task manager with 64 CPUs! ... Source : Microsoft SQL Server Development Customer Advisory Team - Blog Post

NUMA - Hard and Soft

What is NUMA? What about Hard and Soft NUMA? PSS answers these questions and more ... Source : PSS SQL Server Engineers - Blog Post

Virtualization & Consolidation

Consolidation using SQL Server 2008

Server consolidation is a growing trend and this paper assists those considering a SQL Server consolidation exercise ... Source : Allan Hirt - MSDN.com - Whitepaper

SQL Server on VMWare

Jason shares the results of his informal survey of user experiences with SQL Server on VMWare ... Source : Jason Massie - Blog Post

Physical to Virtual

In this post, Brent summarises the advantages (and his experiences) of the Physical to Virtual (P2V) process, used to convert an existing physical server to a new virtualized server ... Source : BrentOzar.com - Blog Post

Disk2vhd

Disk2vhd is a tool for creating virtual machines based on a existing physical machine, but unlike other physical-to-virtual tools, Disk2vhd can be run against a physical machine that's currently online ... Source : Technet.com - sysinternals - Download

Virtualization Video Podcast Series

In the first of this 3 part series, Brent compares Microsoft's Hyper-V with VMWare ESX. Subsequent parts include; "Killer Features" and "Smoke and Mirrors" ... Source : Brent Ozar - SQLServerPedia.com - Video

Virtualization; Views from the Field

Jeff shares the thoughts and experiences of several well known SQL Server Identities; Brent Ozar, Kevin Kline and Lindsey Allen ... Source : Jeff James - SQLMag.com

Free E-Book; Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions

A free 15MB pdf download covering Microsoft based virtualization solutions ... Source : Microsoft.com - Downloads

Virtualization; Reasons Against

Brent provides a number of good reasons why NOT to virtualize SQL Server ... Source : Brent Ozar.com

Virtualization; Reasons For

In contrast to his previous post, Brent provides a number of good reasons why you SHOULD virtualize SQL Server ... Source : Brent Ozar.com

Virtualization; Sysadmin Desire

Ever wonder why your Windows Admin wants to virtualize your SQL Servers? Brent offers a number of suggestions ... Source : Brent Ozar - SQLServerPedia.com - Blog Post

SQL Server Virtualization Whitepaper

Ward links to the recently release whitepaper on Virtualizing SQL Server before offering some interesting commentary of his own ... Source : Ward Pond - Technet.com - Blog Post

SQL Server & Hyper-V: Best Practices and Recommendations

This whitepaper covers a number of Best Practices for running SQL Server in a Hyper-V environment ... Source : Microsoft.com - Whitepaper

Virtualization; Support and Performance Considerations

Get a group of DBAs in the same room as some infrastructure architects, add a few beers, and then ask a question about Virtualizing production SQL Server instances. Hold on big fella, put the chair down! Strong (extreme) responses to this topic are common, and in addressing this, Microsoft have released a number of support and best practice articles. Microsoft now (officially) supports SQL Server in Hyper-V environments, plus other virtualization environments certified under the SVVP program. This page describes the program in more detail, while this whitepaper from SQLCat.com covers a number of Best Practices for running SQL Server in a Hyper-V environment ... Source : Microsoft.com - Support Article

Using SQL Server 2005 in a Virtual Environment

This paper discusses the overall concept of virtualization and factors to consider when deciding whether to use SQL Server in a virtual environment ... Source : DatabaseJournal.com

SQL Server Performance in a VMWare Infrastructure 3 Environment

This paper describes transaction processing workload performance in virtual machines using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and VMware Infrastructure 3. This performance study was conducted at the HP Strategic Alliances Engineering (SAE) lab in Cupertino. The primary goal is to prove that Microsoft SQL Server 2005 can successfully handle enterprise-level transaction-processing workloads when running inside VMware virtual machines. Update; comments on this paper from Marco Russo's blog post ... Source : VMWare.com

Virtualization Troubles

Virtualize everything all the time! Perhaps not. In this post, Conor addresses some of the lesser known issues with Virtualization, particularly as they relate to SQL Server ... Source : Conor Cunningham - sqlskills.com - blog post

SQL Server Consolidation on the 64-Bit Platform

This white paper discusses lessons learned during test scenarios in which Microsoft deployed and operated a 64-bit server to consolidate Microsoft SQL Server instances that previously resided on separate physical computers ... Source : Microsoft.com - Whitepaper

64 Bit Platforms

MemToLeave and 64bit

Bob Ward talks about one of the benefits of 64bit SQL Server - the absence of "MemToLeave" issues ... Source : Bob Ward - CSS SQL Server Engineers - Blog Post

64 Bit SQL Server

Adam Machanic discusses the advantages of a 64 bit SQL Server environment ... Source : searchsqlserver.techtarget.com - Article

Advantages of a 64-bit Environment

Review this white paper to learn about the two key factors motivating the rapid adoption and deployment of SQL Server 2005 (64-bit): Clear industry dynamics supporting the longer-term prospects of 64-bit computing and Specific benefits that SQL Server 2005 (64-Bit) bring to customers ... Source : Microsoft.com - Whitepaper

Will 64-bit increase the performance of my SQL Server application?

With 64-bit servers becoming more mainstream and SQL Server customers running more deployments on native 64-bit Windows there is a common misperception that running on 64-bit will always provide an increase in performance over 32-bit ... Source : Microsoft ISV Program Management Team Blog – Blog Post

64 Bit Solutions on SQL Server 2005

Stuart Ozer's (SQL CAT Team) Powerpoint presentation from SEAS 2006 on 64 Bit SQL Server platform benefits and best practices ... Source : Microsoft.com - Download