Episode 105
| July 18, 2017
| 43 minutes
When is enough, enough?
How can you tell when a change is enough of a change? How do you know you didn’t make too big of a change? Steve and I discuss some thoughts around what you might look for when you make certain changes. Some of the components we cover include Max degree of parallelism, cxpackets, virtual log files, the number of log files for a database, backup retention and memory.
Episode Quotes
“Then I think on the cost threshold for parallelism, again it’s going to take a little bit of knowing your system.”
“What it really depends on oftentimes in most businesses is how much money you are losing for every minute that that database is down.”
“If your system is performing great no reason to even talk about more memory unless it’s growing and you’re planning for the future.”
Listen to Learn
01:37 About the Companero Conference
02:54 Max degreee of parallelism, knowing the sweet spot
06:28 Max degree of paralellism , number of cores
10:08 CXPACKETS Waits
12:05 Cost threshold for parallelism
14:54 Virtual Log Files (VLF), growth and issues
18:53 What makes VLFs a bad thing?
23:23 How do you know if you have enough, not enough or too many?
29:00 Number of log files for a database
30:39 Backup retention periods and scenarios
37:35 More on memory
41:50 Page Life Expectancy
Meet the Hosts
Carlos Chacon
With more than 10 years of working with SQL Server, Carlos helps businesses ensure their SQL Server environments meet their users’ expectations. He can provide insights on performance, migrations, and disaster recovery. He is also active in the SQL Server community and regularly speaks at user group meetings and conferences. He helps support the free database monitoring tool found at databasehealth.com and provides training through SQL Trail events.
Eugene Meidinger
Eugene works as an independent BI consultant and Pluralsight author, specializing in Power BI and the Azure Data Platform. He has been working with data for over 8 years and speaks regularly at user groups and conferences. He also helps run the GroupBy online conference.
Kevin Feasel
Kevin is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and proprietor of Catallaxy Services, LLC, where he specializes in T-SQL development, machine learning, and pulling rabbits out of hats on demand. He is the lead contributor to Curated SQL, president of the Triangle Area SQL Server Users Group, and author of the books PolyBase Revealed (Apress, 2020) and Finding Ghosts in Your Data: Anomaly Detection Techniques with Examples in Python (Apress, 2022). A resident of Durham, North Carolina, he can be found cycling the trails along the triangle whenever the weather's nice enough.
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