SQL Server Performance tuning is usually not a planned activity. Often, performance problems will happen at the worst times and this prompts an “emergency” performance tuning effort by the DBA. During the emergency intervention, any of the following changes could be applied on the server. Manually creating or dropping indexes Creating indexes and statistics via… Continue reading A SQL Server Performance Tuning Framework
Category: Performance Tuning
The importance of taking a regular SQL Server Baseline
Are your databases performing faster or slower than one month ago? Stop guessing and take a SQL Server baseline! If you are planning a major code release, migrating to a new server, or upgrading your hardware, then you should take a baseline before and after your change so you can assess the impact on database… Continue reading The importance of taking a regular SQL Server Baseline
Comparing SQL Server Performance Baselines
Taking a baseline of your SQL Server and comparing performance over time is an important part of proper SQL Server management. By regularly comparing baselines you can identify trends, anticipate when bottlenecks are likely to occur, and quickly find the root cause of performance bottlenecks. Here are some questions that can be answered by taking… Continue reading Comparing SQL Server Performance Baselines
Chatty application performance on an Azure VM
A three tier application running on Azure VMs We were recently contacted by a customer because they had moved their application to a test environment on Azure and performance had become unacceptable. The application consisted of a three tier architecture: an HTTP layer, a middle tier of J2EE applications running on JBoss and the SQL… Continue reading Chatty application performance on an Azure VM
Quick script to defragment SQL Server indexes
Quick script to defragment SQL Server indexes Here is a quick script that will defragment the indexes in your database and updates the statistics. If the indexes are fragmented in more than one database then you should run this script on each one of your databases. Beware, don’t run this script while your database is… Continue reading Quick script to defragment SQL Server indexes
Two ways to tune your SQL Server queries
Once you have identified the queries that are running slowly on your server, you can often improve the top 3 to 5 most slowly running ones to see a significant performance improvements. An easy way to identify your slowest running SQL Server queries is to use our baseline reports tool. Here are two ways to… Continue reading Two ways to tune your SQL Server queries
4 Performance Counters for SQL Server
A good approach to use when investigating a SQL Server performance problem is to start at a high level and then zoom in on the problem area. If you start your investigation with these 4 counters you will have a good idea of whether the problem is memory, disk, or CPU. SQL Server:Buffer Manager Page… Continue reading 4 Performance Counters for SQL Server