I've already explained that no, it doesn't make your database server more reliable - and in fact, it's the exact opposite. But what about performance? The answer is going to depend on your hardware and workload, but let's work through an example. I'll take the first lab workload from the Mastering Server Tuning class and…
You're a DBA responsible for making sure SQL Server databases are online, backed up, corruption-free, and fast. Your databases have gradually grown in size over time, and you're starting to hit new size issues you haven't encountered before.
Nightly maintenance windows are getting smaller, you're not able to refresh your development environments quickly enough, and you're not able to run DBCC CHECKDB as often as you'd like.
You've heard these terms thrown around about storage, and you're not sure what they mean, and how they relate to each other. Let's make it simpler by using an analogy. Say you want to measure a shipping company. You're trying to decide whether to use DHL, FedEx, UPS, or your local postal service. You could…
Storage sizing isn't just about space: it's about latency and throughput.
When you move to new hardware or the cloud, and when you try to consolidate SQL Servers, you can't just add up the database sizes and call it a day. Storage sizing isn't just about space: it's about latency and throughput. So how can we look at an existing SQL Server and translate that into requirements?
Your users are complaining that their queries are slow. You've tried changing SQL Server settings, tuning indexes, but the problem just won't go away. You've got a hunch that it's a storage problem, but you need real, empirical proof. You need numbers that no one can argue, and you need to know acceptable targets for those numbers.
I bet you wanna know whether your storage is hot or not, and there's no quicker, easier way to get a rough idea of your storage's capabilities than to fire up CrystalDiskMark. This month, CrystalDiskMark released an all-new version 7, and it makes for even better testing.
Start by downloading it and installing it - sadly, there's no zip file version anymore that you can stick on a network share and run remotely.
It's been a few years since we've stopped in for a sanity check. Quick: without searching the web for prices, put these items in order. Do it on a scratch paper, guessing how much you think each one costs, then arrange 'em. SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition licensing for 4 cores SQL Server 2017 Enterprise…
Enter SANdman
When people buy SANs, it's often quite a large investment. Whether it's all SSD, all flash, or there are tiers of storage that different types of data live on, those disks aren't cheap. When people visualize their SAN, it's usually just the server and the pool of drives.
But there's some important stuff in between the Server and the SAN -- SAN doesn't stand for Storage Abstraction Nerglefwomp.
You’re a database administrator, Windows admin, or developer. You might even be a marmot. You’re building your first SQL Servers in Google Compute Engine, and you’re stuck at the create instance screen. How many CPUs should you use? How much memory? How are you supposed to configure storage? Will it be fast enough, and what should you do if it isn’t?
During Dell DBA Days 2016, we got to hang out with Doug Bernhardt of Dell's storage team. He's the guy who publishes Dell's SQL Server documentation, builds their Fast Track reference architectures, and gets to play with all kinds of cool toys. Doug emailed us and asked: Is there any solutions type of info (or any…
What I started with isn't what I ended with
I started off really trying to stay close to budget. When I realized I needed to go over by a bit (storage, mostly), and that not all of my parts would even be here in the calendar year (the M.2), I started to wonder if I got the parts that I should have. This is what I started with.
Overall, this was pretty easy
I'm thankful that generations of enthusiasts have agreed (mostly) on standards, and written oodles of documentation and guides to make stuff like this easy. Seriously. To put things in some perspective, when I first started building and tinkering with desktops, I remember having to manually set IRQs when there was a conflict. It was stupid.
We already know what I'd do
In my last post, I talked about the desktop I'm building with my hardware budget for this year (and, uh, some of next year's, too...). Based on awesome feedback from you all, I made a few changes to the specs.
And holy cow, ordering made things even more different. Here were the problems I ran into:
UPDATED 12/15/2016
Spending Brent's Money
Reason number infinity spacetime + 1000 why working here rules is having a generous annual tax writeoff hardware budget. The first time around, I basically blew it all on working from home essentials. This time around I'm building a cool toy: a big beefy desktop.
Let's start with definitions
Many SANs have caching built in. What kind of cache is important, because if you're dealing with non-SSD storage underneath, you could be waiting for a really long time for it to respond.
Let's start with some definitions of the most popular caching mechanisms available for SANs. I'm not going to say 'only', because some vendor out there might have some proprietary stuff going on that I haven't heard of.
We've all had to move a database. For databases above a small size, this is a painful process. While there are a number of ways that you can move a database without downtime, they all involve a lot of extra work. What if there were something easier? What's the Real Problem? For most people, moving…
James Serra caught three new SQL Server 2014 Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architecture designs released by EMC, HP, and Lenovo. I love reading these because they show each vendor's state-of-the-art storage infrastructure.
Two of them have remarkably similar goals - to hold a 28 TB data warehouse:
We've got a client that does big batch jobs every day, loading hundreds of gigabytes of data or more in short bursts. They were frustrated with slow performance on the batch jobs, and after we performed our SQL Critical Care® with 'em, it was really clear that their hardware was the bottleneck. They were using…
One of the big reasons you spend big money on server-quality hardware is to get cool stuff to make administration easier. Each hardware vendor provides their own software tools - Dell includes OpenManage, IBM includes Director, and HP includes their System Management Homepage.
To illustrate how it works without violating anybody's NDAs, I picked up a used HP DL380 off eBay to use as a demo.
Everyone wants to make sure they're getting the best performance out of their solid state storage. If you're like a lot of people, you want to make sure you're getting what you paid for, but how do you know for sure that the drive is performing well?Watch that AverageThe first way to monitor performance it…
