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SQL Server Clustering - what is the difference between Active/Passive and Active/Active Clustering, which is good for better performance?

Published 18 March 8 4:20 AM | SSQA.net

First part of question is a pure newbie FAQ to know about, and the simple answer would be it is one of the Clustering type you can adopt within your SQL Server environment. To cover on newbie aspect both Active/Passive & Active/Active configuration...

Filed under: sql server, performance, security, clustering, 2005, partition, monitoring, active/passive, parallel execution, performance monitoring, active/active, scalability

SQL Server 2005 BI evaluate and diagnose Analysis Services database performance

Published 18 February 8 3:57 AM | SSQA.net

Performance - one word does it all! You are aware that during the Performance Tuning exercise there are few quick wins within the SQL Server Relational Database Engine such as table statistics for data and indexes. When it comes to Analysis Services Read...

Filed under: sql server, profiler, performance, databases, security, process, sysmon, administrator, Analysis Services, diagnose

SQL Server Performance - what it takes for a newbie DBA in resolving performance issues?

Published 5 February 8 2:57 AM | SSQA.net

SQL Server Performance Tuning, sounds familiar on a DBA perspective and though it sounds like an easy words but when you start analyzing the problem it is far deeper inside. When you refer to the web resources such as forums/newsgroups then a common question...

Filed under: sql server, performance, blogs, blocking, security, query, best practice, index plan, sql server central, newsgroups, forums

SQL Server Reporting Services - Do you cache popular reports for better performance?

Published 7 January 8 5:30 AM | SSQA.net

Do you cache or not? By default SQL Server cache stores the data & query plan in cache to provide better performance for your queries. Similary caching is also included in SQL Server Reporting Services where this caching can shorten the time required...

Filed under: sql server, performance, security, search, update, users, report builder, BOL, best practices, reporting services, books online, caching, cache reports

SQL Server 2005 memory configuration gotchas

Published 28 December 7 4:44 AM | SSQA.net

This may be last post in Performance Tuning & Security blog section here for this year!! Most of this year in the forums & newsgroups I have seen a common question asking about memory configuration within SQL Server 2005. As you may be aware that...

Filed under: sql server, performance, memory, security, applications, best practice, awe, pae, dynamic, 3gb, benchmarking, performance monitoring, settings

SQL Server 2005: Deny Server-Level Dynamic Management Views to public group

Published 21 December 7 7:47 AM | SSQA.net

As you are aware DMV - Dynamic management views are very good to provide server-level information and some of them with detailed information on the execution environment of the database engine. Just to introduce about DMVs, there are two types of dynamic...

Filed under: sql server, package, performance, security, dmv, users, view, best practice, public, monitoring, server state

SQL Server performance monitoring requirement and specifications, heard about baseline and benchmarking?

Published 19 December 7 6:6 AM | SSQA.net

How do you define the terms "Performance Monitoring"? What is your baseline & benchmarks? Have you ever used PERFMON (SYSMON) & PROFILER for serious performance issues within your SQL Server environment? The answer may be not 'yes'...

Filed under: dashboard, sql server, performance, databases, microsoft, security, blog, environment, best practice, backups, monitoring, baseline, benchmarking, downloads, performance monitoring

TSQL to findout blocking and locks on a SQL Server?

Published 7 December 7 1:8 PM | SSQA.net

Have you ever performed huge operations such as deleting records of a table and processing inserts on that table at the same time? This is a common task that every application will have to perform and you can avoid by fine tuning your queries (mostly...

Filed under: sql server, performance, indexes, blocking, security, insert, tsql, locks, deletes

SQL Server - database maintenance gotchas

Published 3 December 7 12:43 PM | SSQA.net

What kind of database maintenance operations you should be doing when you are DBA? You should have better understanding on the terms in managing the Database platform at your end, without proper information it is very hard to say you are managing your...

Filed under: dashboard, sql server, performance, databases, security, maintenance plan

SQL Server 2008 Data Compression, what it is - how does it work?

Published 3 December 7 7:54 AM | SSQA.net

As you know data compression facility is added onto the SQL Server 2008 version, though this is not a new feature and I would call it as an enhanced feature in SQL Server. This subject of data compression has already been introduced in SQL Server 2005...

Filed under: sql server, performance, microsoft, blogs, security, 2008, ctp, data capture, 2005, compress, data compression

Determining the required capacity of an I/O subsystem before deploying the database

Published 17 September 7 8:49 AM | SSQA.net

It is a good practice to determine the required capacity for a database application before it is deployed on the Production environment. As it speaks the I/O system is "most" important to the performance of SQL Server, in the event of any performance...

Filed under: sql server, performance, microsoft, security, i/o, storage, throughput, vendor

SQL Server 2005 using Cryptography & Encryption what they are for?

Published 13 September 7 7:46 AM | SSQA.net

Since the inception of SQL Server 2005 data encryption and cryptography functionality has elevated to a new level, this wasn't the case until SQL 2000 version. The overall security improvements within SQL 2005 is mainly with 'certficate' authentication...

Filed under: sql server, performance, databases, microsoft, security, audit, encryption, authentication, authorization, cryptography

Whats the best way to setup memory on a four-node cluster?

Published 6 September 7 4:42 AM | SSQA.net

Though it is more to do with SQL Storage kind of question, I have just dragged into Performance tuning section for the sake of large installation you talk with clustering. For the sake of discussion it seems better to plan ahead for the failing instances...

Filed under: sql server, performance, analysis, high availability, ssis, security, ssas, ssms, clustering, resources

Performance - check whether it is affecting application or system, don't blame SQL Server alone

Published 3 September 7 9:42 AM | SSQA.net

Its a general assumption that whenever performance is degraded, the finger will be pointed to SQL Server, pretty easy eh!? If you look at any of the SQL Server related forums then 3 in 10 questions asks same question and nothing but shove blame on SQL...

Filed under: application, sql server, performance, blocking, security, query, table, wait, queue, high cpu, oltp

Unable to start SQL Server service with a specific certificate?

Published 31 August 7 8:5 AM | SSQA.net

You may be aware that using SSL communications a HTTP server can have encryption for us, in this regard certificates must be authorized for server authentication. Microsoft recommends that you can do this by either obtaining an SSL certificate from a...

Filed under: sql server, performance, security, services, certificate, start, ssl, http

Rebuild some fragmented indexes - problem with Extent Scan Fragmentation value

Published 24 August 7 6:24 AM | SSQA.net

This was the question from SSP forums, I’m trying to rebuild few fragmented indexes on a table that is updated on regular basis. The “dbcc showcontig” gave this result: Table: 'Confidential' (999999999); index ID: 5, database ID: 5 LEAF level...

Filed under: sql server, performance, security, dbcc, index, table, fragmentation, showcontig, defrag

More than 3GB memory is not used even though boot.ini has these switches on /3GB /PAE /AWE.

Published 23 August 7 4:33 AM | SSQA.net

Yet another AWE memory settings blog post here that I'm posting for the issues we have had recently. Before going into details review about 3GBPAE blurb here and also refer to this KBA274750 to enable more than 2GB memory within your SQL Server Enterprise...

Filed under: sql server, performance, memory, security, windows, edition, enterprise, instances, awe, pae, 3gb

Smaller disks <> more spindles which one is better for performance?

Published 10 August 7 4:53 AM | SSQA.net

I have gone through a question within the forums asking "smaller disks or more spindles" which is better for performance. The simple answer is more disks to handle the data growth and also mostly depends upon the number of transactons that are...

Filed under: sql server, performance, security, hardware, disks, spindle

Whats with 64 bit computing on SQL Server

Published 4 August 7 9:41 AM | SSQA.net

What advantages we took when deployed the 64-bit computing within SQL Server As you aware 64 bit computing with 64-bit processors have become the standard for systems ranging from the most scalable servers to desktop PCs. The way to take full advantage...

Filed under: sql server, performance, management, ssis, security, ssas, ssms, ssrs, x64, computing

Unused indexes on a database, its good and bad

Published 27 July 7 8:51 AM | SSQA.net

You may be aware that the indexes on a SQL Server database take up space, so in case of unused indexes its obvious that they waste storage. It is easy to find the indexes using SP_HELPINDEX statement against a table, so to identify the unused indexes...

Filed under: sql server, performance, indexes, security, query, unused indexes