The Friday poll this week looks at porting to other chipsets.  Read more...

The Friday poll this week looks at porting to other chipsets.  Read more...

This paper describes the deployment and testing results of SQL Server 2005 using the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator with an EqualLogic iSCSI SAN. It helps you understand best practices and the benefits of using an iSCSI SAN with SQL Server 2005.  Read more...

Or should I place my database files on SAN or directly-attached storage? This is a frequently asked question. It comes up repeatedly in public newsgroups, email discussion lists, and private meetings with customers who are concerned with database performance.  Read more...

The I/O system is important to the performance of SQL Server. When configuring a new server for SQL Server or when adding or modifying the disk configuration of an existing system, it is good practice to determine the capacity of the I/O subsystem prior to deploying SQL Server. This white paper discusses validating and determining the capacity of an I/O subsystem. A number of tools are available for performing this type of testing. This white paper focuses on the SQLIO.exe tool, but also compares all available tools. It also covers basic I/O configuration best practices for SQL Server 2005.  Read more...

This is the third article that deals with analyzing the various possibilities involving various RAID setups and differing numbers of hard drives. We used the same hard disks again here: eight Samsung HM321KJ SATA/300 drives powered all of the possible RAID 0, RAID 5 and RAID 6 setups, with from three to as many as eight hard drives configured to use stripe sizes of 4 to 128 kB.  Read more...

For our RAID tests, we once again use Samsung HM321KJ SATA/300 drives. This time, we benchmarked RAID 5 and RAID 6 setups with three to eight hard drives.  Read more...

Most enthusiast and mainstream users would consider setting up a RAID array mainly for performance reasons - few really care about data safety. For this reason, the majority of arrays installed consists of only two drives, which run a simple RAID 0 stripe set. Haven't you ever asked yourself how these RAID arrays scale as you increase the number of hard drives?  Read more...

SAN setup for improved SQL Server performance and scalability means optimizing disk system design. Consider bandwidth, RAID and data consistency.  Read more...

Green is the hot topic these days, and the concept is having an impact on the way people think about datacenters. Companies around the world are announcing ways to save energy and reduce  Read more...