Tips for Hardware Tuning (SQL Server)

Tips for Hardware Tuning (SQL Server)

I'm presenting a session at the upcoming SQL Connections event (www.sqlconnections.com) called ‘Bare Metal Tuning’.  The idea behind the session is that I describe how to configure an ‘ideal’ SQL Server from the bare metal server on up.  In this session, I point out actual quantitative performance differences between the different options available to your.  For example, you’ve probably already heard that when choosing RAID, mirroring (RAID1) performs better than striping with parity (RAID5).  This presentation actually tells you in relative terms how much performance improvement you can expect to get, based on the comparison of a baseline server configuration, and the ‘upgraded’ server configuration.

If you’re new to hardware tuning, the first place to start is with the basic attributes of RAID arrays.  I find that http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html is an excellent resource for learning the basics about RAID.  

In addition, www.SQLServerPerformance.com is another invaluable resource for all things related to performance on a SQL Server.  One thing I like about there articles is the way they collect a variety of best practices and tips into a single article.  For example, the article http://www.sql-server-performance.com/hardware_tuning.asp is not just a single-topic tuning article.  It is actually quite a long article with several dozen different tips in five broad categories: General, CPU, Memory, I/O, and Network.  

Now that I’ve tipped you to a couple of my favorite spots, I’d like to ask you – What kind of questions would you like for a session like this to answer for you?

Let me know what you think!  Thanks,

-Kevin