Aaron Bertrand has some advice for us:
There is a common problem in SQL Server where contention when writing to a single page can lead to excessive waiting. This waiting comes in the form of the wait type PAGELATCH_EX, and often happens when the clustering key is a monotonically increasing value – like an IDENTITY or date/time column. Pedro Lopes has highlighted some non-trivial workarounds in his post, “PAGELATCH_EX waits and heavy inserts,” and there is some official guidance in the Microsoft Docs article, “Resolve last-page insert PAGELATCH_EX contention in SQL Server.” But are there any ways to address this issue without intrusive changes?
Read on to see what Aaron has in mind.