Collection of SQL Server Storage Best Practices

When installing your SQL Server, 2000 or 2005, do never forget to check the recommended configuration of your storage space.

I’ve collected over time a series of useful information regarding SQL Server Storage Best Practices, which are as follows:

· Isolate log from data at the physical disk level (different physical disks)

· Tempdb on a different drive in respect to other databases (different physical disks)

· No other Luns on the array on the same disk, when it happens that those Luns are heavy used by other application, then performance might be worse on all Luns

· Always place log files on RAID 1+0 (The amount of performance gained will vary based on the HW vendor’s RAID implementations.)

· Performance may benefit if TEMPDB is placed on RAID 1+0

· Increase the number of tempdb datafiles as described in https://support.microsoft.com/kb/328551/en-us

· Having the different tempdb data files on separate disks would be good.

· Ensure that you have an adequate number of spindles to support your IO requirements with an acceptable latency

· Put different datafiles or different logs on different disks in order to split activity on different disks

Useful resources:

Storage Top 10 Best Practices

https://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/storage-top-10.mspx

Deploying SQL Server 2005 with SAN #1

https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2005/10/11/479887.aspx

SQL Server 2005 Configuration Blog #2.doc

https://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2005/11/21/495440.aspx

- Beatrice Nicolini -