Microsoft is now recommending diskspd. At this point, I suppose SQLIO could be considered “venerable” but tip a 40 on the curb for a good tool.
Comments closedCategory: Storage
Joey D’Antoni shows us how to measure IOPs (I/O Per Second) on a SQL Server instance/server:
That handy SQL Server:Resource Pool Stats counter and it’s Disk Read IO/sec and Disk Write IO/sec provide you with the data you need to give your SAN admin. In this screenshot this is an Enterprise Edition instance, and you can see my resource pools on the left side—so if you are using resource governor, you could use this to classify IO workload by application for potential chargeback situations.
Very useful, and when combined with Resource Governor, can help you throttle I/O effectively (as opposed to wildly flailing in the general direction of a fix).
Comments closedJames Serra walks us through the list of storage options available on Azure:
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure, created by Microsoft, for building, deploying and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed and Microsoft partner-hosted datacenters. Included in this platform are multiple ways of storing data. Below I will give a brief overview of each so you can get a feel for the best use case for each, with links provided that go into more detail:
There are several options available, running the gamut from unstructured data (blob storage, file & disk storage), semi-structured data (data lake store), to structured data (Azure SQL Database) and a few points in between.
Comments closedGlenn Berry introduces us to Storage Spaces Direct:
One of the more exciting new features in Windows Server 2016 is called Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), which enables organizations to use multiple, clustered commodity file server nodes to build highly available, scalable storage systems with local storage, using SATA, SAS, or PCIe NVMe devices. You can use internal drives in each storage node, or direct-attached disk devices using “Just a Bunch of Disks” (JBOD) where each JBOD is only connected to a single storage node. This eliminates the previous requirement for a shared SAS fabric and its complexities (which was required with Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces and SOFS), and also enables using less expensive storage devices such as SATA disks.
This sounds like a technology with interesting potential, and not requiring SAS disks will make it more likely to be adopted.
Comments closed