SQL Server Articles

SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Group Setup 

Microsoft Failover Clustering Setup

AlwaysOn Availability Group Setup

Adding a new node to an AlwaysOn environment


How to Establish a Performance Baseline for a SQL Server Instance

In this blog post, I discuss how to use a free utility called DVDStore to establish a performance metric for a SQL Server instance. It establishes this number based on the raw performance of the instance, which benchmarks the overall impact of the CPU, memory, storage, and instance-level configurations. Check it out here!


Why SQL Server DBAs Need Access to VMware vCenter

Your DBAs need direct access to VMware vCenter. At a minimum, they need read-only access to the performance statistics for their virtual machines hosting their database server, as well as the host that they reside upon. I consider a requirement for all DBAs to have vCenter performance statistics access in environments where I have any sort of say in the matter, and here’s why.


CPU Overcommitment and Its Impact on SQL Server Performance on VMware

In the early days of virtualization, the core focus of virtualization was primarily consolidation. You could achieve quite high consolidation ratios, with some even as great as 20 to 1. This consolidation worked great for applications like file and print servers, development workloads, or other very lightly used servers. The virtualized servers that hold these servers are technically overcommitted on resources, but the workloads are so low that the end users would not notice the effects.

However, as more and more business-critical workloads are virtualized, maintaining this same level of consolidation is guaranteed to rear its ugly head in the form of performance degradation of the virtual machines. Most VMware administrators realize that resource overcommitment is slowing down their most intensive servers.

How can this be, you ask?

Few administrators know about a simple metric called CPU Ready.


Ongoing Performance Metric Collection with Windows Perfmon

Need to set up ongoing performance statistic collection on a SQL Server so you have a historical view of a server’s activity? Look no further!


 

Benchmark Your SQL Server Instance with DVDStore

 

Determine the performance of a SQL Server instance with one easy number, and use the number to compare the performance of other SQL Server instances – for free!