Hardware

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…

How to Use CrystalDiskMark 7 to Test Your SQL Server’s Storage

Last Updated November 23, 2019

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 –…

Pop quiz: what do these things cost?

Last Updated March 9, 2019

Cloud Computing, Hardware, Licensing

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…

From The Server To The SAN

Last Updated January 3, 2019

Hardware, SQLBits, Storage

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…

New White Paper: SQL Server Performance Tuning in Google Compute Engine

Last Updated March 17, 2017

Google Compute Engine, Hardware, Wait Stats

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…

What Do You Wanna Know About Storage?

Last Updated February 14, 2017

The Great Hardware Robbery of 2016 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…

Build Me A Build: Things I’d Do Different

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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…

Build Me A Build: Assembly Olympics

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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…

Build Me A Build: What Would You Do?

Last Updated February 14, 2017

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.…

Build Me A Build: What’s Your Hardware Budget?

Last Updated February 14, 2017

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. Why, in the age of…

Is your SAN’s cache killing tempdb?

Last Updated February 13, 2017

SQL Server, Storage, TempDB

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…

Moving Databases Made Easy – SQL Server on a File Share

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

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? Every database is unique and precious. What’s the…

Reading the New Fast Track Reference Architectures from HP & EMC

Last Updated February 13, 2017

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: From HP: HP DL380 G8 with local PCI Express…

SSD RAID Load Testing Results from a Dell PowerEdge R720

Last Updated December 9, 2018

Hardware, Load Testing, Storage

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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…

How to Use HP System Management Homepage

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Hardware, SQL Server

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…

Monitoring SSD Performance

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Jeremiah Peschka

SQL Server, Storage

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 Average The first way to monitor…

How Big Are Your Log Writes? Spying on the SQL Server Transaction Log

Last Updated February 13, 2017

Kendra Little

I’m a bit of a researcher. When I want to know about a topic, I start off by doing a lot of reading. After I take a lot in, I want to make sure I understand the details. At that point, I try to think like a scientist. I come up with ways to test what…

Storage Protocol Basics: iSCSI, NFS, Fibre Channel, and FCoE

Last Updated February 13, 2017

SQL Server, Storage

Wanna get your storage learn on? VMware has a well-laid-out explanation of the pros and cons of different ways to connect to shared storage. The guide covers the four storage protocols, but let’s get you a quick background primer first. iSCSI, NFS, FC, and FCoE Basics iSCSI means you map your storage over TCPIP. You…

How to Interview Storage Vendors

Last Updated February 13, 2017