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!
Large Memory Pages
Learn more about enabling large memory pages in Enterprise-edition SQL Servers to boost performance
SQL Server on Linux
Want to run SQL Server on Linux? It’s quite different than Windows. Here’s some tips!
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!
Distributed Replay Walkthrough
Distributed Replay is not the easiest utility to manage but is incredibly powerful if you can get it working.
Prep AG for DR Replication
How to prep a SQL Server Availability Group and their VMs for DR replication.
Performance
Import Perfmon Into SQL Server
Let’s import an ongoing Perfmon performance data collection file into a SQL Server for improved analytics!
Setup Perfmon for 24x7 Collection
Let’s set up Windows Perfmon for ongoing 24×7 collection for your critical servers.
Network Throughput Testing
iperf is a great utility for testing network throughput between two servers
HammerDB Benchmarking
Generate a synthetic workload baseline for your SQL Server performance with HammerDB
Automate DiskSpd Testing
Automate your storage testing with Microsoft’s DiskSpd
VMware
In-Guest Time Sync
VMware improves in-guest time synchronization challenges starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 1.
More PVSCSI Controllers
Leverage additional PVSCSI controllers for your SQL Servers to boost overall performance
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
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!
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
Retrofit your VMs with PVSCSI
Retrofit existing SQL Server VMs with the PVSCSI controller to boost performance
vSphere Co-Stop
VMware Co-Stop is a major force of silent performance penalties if the scheduling isn’t lined up just right
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!
VM Memory Counters Lie
The VMware Active Memory counter should never be used to gauge SQL Server memory usage patterns.
CPU Ready & Overcommitment
CPU Ready, a measurement of CPU scheduling delays in VMware, is a critical metric to monitor when virtualizing your SQL Servers.
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.