Measuring "workload" in SQLServer

  • I'm trying to get a handle on what constitutes a measure of work (to calculate comparative "workloads") in the SQLServer environment. The answer "all of them" is probably neither usable nor correct. How about transactions/sec (from dmv sys.dm_os_performance_counters)?

    Others ... ?

  • We use batch requests per second in PerfMon. On our busiest system, we have 1500-3000 batches per second occurring 24/7.

    Tara Kizer
    Microsoft MVP for Windows Server System - SQL Server
    Ramblings of a DBA (My SQL Server Blog)[/url]
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  • It really kind of depends on your business and your systems. For example, I work for an insurance company. We don't do umpty-gazillion transactions per/second, so measuring just transactions per second wouldn't supply us with much information. Instead, more often than not, we look at query execution time. But even that is not enough of a measure. Instead of finding a single number and deciding that's your point of entry, I'd suggest just a few measures. Base everything on waits and queues. Disk Queue Length, Processor Queue Length and various system waits. Gather those metrics and you'll have a good idea of the performance of the system. Anything else is just a symptom. Transactions/sec went down... why? We have an increased disk queue length. Uh, oh, IO issues. See what I mean?

    "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
    - Theodore Roosevelt

    Author of:
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    SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

  • I totally agree. I should have said this is an OLTP system, not OLAP. Queue length and system waits are great performance metrics, but I'm looking for workload metrics. Different but not totaly opposite.

  • Thanks Tara, and there just happens to be an article on using powershell to capture perfmon statistics in one of my emails this morning: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/gathering-perfmon-data-with-powershell/?utm_source=simpletalk&utm_medium=email-main&utm_content=Perfmon-20100712&utm_campaign=SQL

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