May 21, 2015 at 7:53 am
I feel very Hamlet today...
Has anyone installed the Distributed Replay components? Have they helped? Have they hurt?
Are they even useful or is it just another MS component that potentially steals space and CPU without much of a benefit?
May 21, 2015 at 9:40 am
Yeah, I've installed them and used them successfully. They're great, if terribly fiddly. These would only ever get installed in test or development systems. There's no need, nor should there be a desire, for them in production.
The two situations where I've found them to be the most successful was in basic performance testing. Load up a bunch of queries by hand (loads of work by the way) and have the distributed replay run them against your database. Alternatively, capture a load (easiest way to run it) and then have it replay that load as you adjust indexes, etc. Also an excellent mechanism for regression testing.
Yeah, I think these tools are great. They have not been given enough love by Microsoft, so you're going to struggle to get them to work correctly. However, once you do, they really are terrific.
"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:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
May 21, 2015 at 9:45 am
Brandie Tarvin (5/21/2015)
Has anyone installed the Distributed Replay components?
Yes, several times.
Have they helped? Have they hurt?
Are they even useful or is it just another MS component that potentially steals space and CPU without much of a benefit?
Are you likely to use them?
Are you likely to use this server as a *client* to replay traces against another server? If so, install them, if not, don't.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
May 21, 2015 at 9:46 am
Grant Fritchey (5/21/2015)
They have not been given enough love by Microsoft, so you're going to struggle to get them to work correctly. However, once you do, they really are terrific.
Tell me about it.
I definitely need to blog/write about an error I got with them where the only google hit on the error message is my tweet saying I was getting it.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
May 21, 2015 at 11:44 am
Thanks for the feedback. It's very useful.
Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply