What is horizontal partitioning in SQL Server?

What is horizontal partitioning in SQL Server? Read more →

Predictability is the key to scalability

DBAs are focused on getting the highest queries per second. They will use measures such as average response times. Is this always the best approach? Consider this scenario: A high traffic volume database server – launched with capacity to absorb high queries per second, yet users start to complain some queries are randomly taking longer. The deviation from one request to another is growing and the database server response variance is growing. At the same time , the average response times are still acceptable, but there are some responses taking longer. In this case DBAs need to focus on the... Read more →

OLAP performance tuning

OLAP performance and SQL performance are often compared and contrasted. I prefer to view SQL and OLAP performance working in tandem. Many of the concepts are similar and quite often interdependent. Some quick tips on how to make OLAP faster with some performance tuning tactics 1) Focus on writing optimised MDX queries 2) Consider the use of aggregations for standard reports. Aggregations can cause a drastic improvement on performance 3) Experiment with Cache warming for daily reports. On some systems starting with a cold cache will cause queries to run slower - initially. The purpose of Cache warming is to... Read more →

How to archive data into a separate SQL database

How to archive data into a separate SQL database Read more →

System Reserved Partition and monitoring

On Windows 2008 R2 , a System Reserved Partition is created. It is 100 MB and acts as a preparatory step for implementing Bitlocker. The installation doesn’t install Bitlocker. BitLocker is a disk encryption method for full disk encryption. The System Reserved Partition can cause problems in some monitoring tools. The System Reserved Partition volume is unmapped but is monitored by default on some monitoring agents. Various vendors have workarounds for excluding the System Reserved Partition information and therefore false alerts. When monitoring a Database Server such as SQL Server or DB2 accurate and effective alerts are critical.When monitoring SQL... Read more →