NTFS Cluster size and performance gains

  • Hello Experts,

    Is there any performance gains with regards NTFS cluster size...would a 64KB size perform better than a 8KB?

    R

  • It can depend on a number of factors, including the type of workload, but 64k is often regarded as your best starting point. We've just put in a new SAN and this gave us our best results in testing - your situation may differ. Our throughput is OLTP biased, but I have seen it suggested that 128 or 256 MAY work better on dedicated Dimensionally modeled datawarehousing servers, I have never tested this so can't offer an informed opinion on it's validity, just letting you know it's out there.

    Basically, the recommendation for this, as for most other things is "Test".

    This has some info on disc configuration you may find useful.

    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd758814(v=sql.100).aspx

    I'm a DBA.
    I'm not paid to solve problems. I'm paid to prevent them.

  • Bob Dorr strongly recommended to use 64KB cluster size regardless whether your underlying disks are on SAN or direct attached because though your block size is 64KB at the OS level and when that I/O request gets to SAN , it depends on how the SAN treats there block size. Differs with every SAN, for ex the minimum block request size for IBM SAN is 1GB. More details can be found here https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/psssql/2010/03/24/how-it-works-bob-dorrs-sql-server-io-presentation/ [/url].

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply