sp_BlitzFirst® Result:
Backups or Restores Running

According to sp_BlitzFirst®‘s diagnostics, your server is running a database backup right now.

If your storage subsystem is fast enough, you can run backups during regular production hours without causing a problem. The backup alone doesn’t do anything that breaks SQL Server performance. However, reading the contents of your database’s data and log files can put additional stress on your storage subsystem. If your system is already under memory pressure and having to rely on the drives to deliver data fast enough for regular user queries, then a backup or restore can push it over the edge.

To improve performance, ask these questions:

Can we reschedule the backup or restore to happen outside of business hours?

Can we make the backups or restores run faster? Consider enabling SQL Server’s backup compression, striping your backups across multiple files, or writing to a faster target. This SQLCat Word whitepaper covers techniques to improve backup performance.

Can we add memory to the server so that end user queries are served out of cached pages rather than hitting the storage?

Where is our backup/restore bottleneck – do we need to read from drives faster, or write to the backup share faster?

For personalized help with getting the right answers for your server, we’ve got SQL Critical Care®.