To ensure your SQL Server databases and applications run at their full potential, you must continually monitor and identify performance problems and quickly address bottlenecks. This guide will help you do all that and more. It covers everything SQL Server performance, from the very best to the very worst practices and performance-tuning myths. If you'd like to see a specific topic covered regarding SQL Server performance, send us an e-mail or ask expert Jeremy Kadlec for help.
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- Checklist: Load testing -- the magic bullet for SQL Server performance tuning
- Checklist: Prepare SQL Server for peak workloads
- Tip: Develop a performance baseline
- Tip: SQL Server 2005 DMVs: Exposing the state of your server
- Tip: Stored procedure: Monitor SQL Server connections
- Tip: Maintenance checks for SQL Server
- Tip: SQL Server counters
- Book excerpts: "SQL Server 2000 for experienced DBAs," 'Monitoring and Tuning SQL Server
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- Checklist: Ready, set, go! SQL Server performance-tuning checklist
- FAQ: SQL Server performance boosters
- Tip: Optimize SQL Server hardware performance
- Tip: Unite people, processes and technology for performance tuning
- Tip: Choosing a database partitioning method
- Tip: Fire up your merge replication performance
- Tip: Optimizing SQL Server 2000 settings
- Expert response: SQL Server performance considerations when configuring a SAN
- Expert response: Improve performance by spreading data
- Expert response: Separate indexes from data for improved performance
- Expert response: Is my SQL Server 2000 optimized?
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Troubleshooting
- Step-by-Step Guide: Hunt down SQL Server performance problems
- SQL Server Clinic: T-SQL performance problems and solutions
- SQL Server Clinic: Stop locking and blocking
- Tip: SQL Server performance-tuning worst practices
- Webcast: SQL Server performance-tuning myths
- Expert response: Sluggish SQL Server 2000
- Expert response: Long delay when application runs a query
- Expert response: How to speed up a composite nonclustered index-based query
- Expert response: Run sp_updatestats to recover performance
- Expert response: Improve SQL Server performance by creating a transaction log file
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Expert response: SQL Server 2000 jobs running for days
Indexing
- Indexing Guide: The art and science of SQL Server indexing
- Quick steps: 12 indexing tips in 12 minutes
- Tip: Tricks for using the Index Tuning Wizard
- Tip: Solving SQL Server 2000 index fragmentation
- Expert response: Index types in SQL Server 2005
- Expert response: When to upgrade index statistics
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Expert response: How to speed up a composite nonclustered index-based query
Clustering
- Tip: Why cluster
- Tip: Setting up SQL Server clusters on a SAN
- Expert response: Cluster index vs. non-cluster index
- Expert response: How does failover clustering work in SQL Server 2005?
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Expert response: Active/active vs. active/passive clustering
Tools
- Tip: SQL Profiler: Features, functions and setup in SQL Server 2005
- Tip: Database Engine Tuning Adviser: How to tune your new SQL Server 2005
- Tip: Tricks for using the Index Tuning Wizard
- Tip: Tracking query execution with SQL Server 2005 Profiler
- Tip: Query Analyzer: 10 tricks for simple querying
- Learning Guide: SQL Server tools
This was first published in April 2006
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