Technical How-To’s

Over the years, I’ve written up a number of technical how-to documents that can help you better manage your SQL Server and the underlying infrastructure. The links below are some of my favorite posts!

Microsoft SQL Server

MDF to NDF Distribution

Have a massive single MDF or NDF file that you want to spread across more data files in that file group? Learn how to do this with no downtime!

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Large Memory Pages

Learn more about enabling large memory pages in Enterprise-edition SQL Servers to boost performance

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SQL Server on Linux

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Data File Latency Collector

Disk stall is a second metric that should be collected per data and log file. Learn how to collect it here!

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Distributed Replay Walkthrough

Distributed Replay is not the easiest utility to manage but is incredibly powerful if you can get it working.

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Prep AG for DR Replication

How to prep a SQL Server Availability Group and their VMs for DR replication.

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Performance

Import Perfmon Into SQL Server

Let’s import an ongoing Perfmon performance data collection file into a SQL Server for improved analytics!

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Setup Perfmon for 24x7 Collection

Let’s set up Windows Perfmon for ongoing 24×7 collection for your critical servers.

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Network Throughput Testing

iperf is a great utility for testing network throughput between two servers

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HammerDB Benchmarking

Generate a synthetic workload baseline for your SQL Server performance with HammerDB

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Automate DiskSpd Testing

Automate your storage testing with Microsoft’s DiskSpd

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VMware

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In-Guest Time Sync

VMware improves in-guest time synchronization challenges starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 1.

Pre-Update 1 Guidance

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More PVSCSI Controllers

Leverage additional PVSCSI controllers for your SQL Servers to boost overall performance

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Snapshot Space Fail-Safe

Keep a text file of zeroes at the root of each datastore to delete just in case a snapshot fills a datastore

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SQL Server on VMware BP Guide

This is the official SQL Server on VMware 6.7 best practices guide that I’ve been contributing to for years. Hear it straight from the source!

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vSphere 6.5 vNUMA Changes

vSphere 6.5 has some breaking changes that could impact the way your SQL Server VMs “see” the underlying CPUs

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Retrofit your VMs with PVSCSI

Retrofit existing SQL Server VMs with the PVSCSI controller to boost performance

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vSphere Co-Stop

VMware Co-Stop is a major force of silent performance penalties if the scheduling isn’t lined up just right

Learn More (Part 1) >

Learn More (Part 2) >

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SQL Server on VMware BP Guide

This is the official SQL Server on VMware 6.7 best practices guide that I’ve been contributing to for years. Hear it straight from the source!

Learn More >

VM Memory Counters Lie

The VMware Active Memory counter should never be used to gauge SQL Server memory usage patterns.

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CPU Ready & Overcommitment

CPU Ready, a measurement of CPU scheduling delays in VMware, is a critical metric to monitor when virtualizing your SQL Servers.

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Microsoft Hyper-V

vCPU Scheduling Metrics

Hyper-V has an equivalent performance overhead counter to VMware’s CPU Ready called CPU Wait Time per Dispatch.

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