I've adopted my own best practice for configuring a SQL Server box for the best performance. These best practices are a culmination of various white papers along with knowledgeable SQL Server experts.

1) Disk storage is going to be one of the crucial areas of concern for overall performance. I recommend that all Data, Logs and TempDB are on RAID 1/0 to start.

2) System LUN can reside on a RAID 5.

3) In a virtual environment it is quite possible to allocate solid state drives to a LUN. If that were the case then moving TempDB to that LUN is ideal.

4) System, Data, Logs & TempDB should be on their separate LUNs.

5) Depending on the level of transactions and sizes of databases, the more memory you can add to a machine the better. Starting with SQL Server 2008 R2 I've been throttling SQL Server Max memory usage to about 2-3 gb of memory less than the total machine memory. This gives the OS some breathing room to run.

6) If you have 16 or less CPU cores in the machine then allocate 1 Tempdb data file per core. Greater than 16 cores then again it all depends on the volume of data passing into/out of the database(s). I'd consider 1/core up to 32 cores, otherwise cores/2 or cores/3 depending on the number of cores.

7) I always pre-allocate each TempDB file (both data & Log). There is a best practice on setting up TempDB worth googling for and reading. Typically I choose a size based on how much room I have for the TempDB data Drive and would allocate about 70% of the drive to TempDB. For the TempDB Log file I will make it double the size of a single TempDB data file. So if I'm making 2gb files at 16 files I'd make a 4gb log file. (I tend to over provision TempDB, but I have never had any kind of latency due to problems with TempDB).

8) Finally I try to determine how much is going on with the database(s) that are going to reside on the server. If there are going to be a large volume of transactions I guesstimate growth and pre-allocate the data & log files.

This should be a good starting point. I'm sure there are others that may feel differently than what I've suggested here. However I have never had any issues with all of the machines that I've provisioned. I can't say the same for machines that were set up before I started.

Machines that I've inherited often run into troubles at some point in the future. Case in point, one box I inherited was one of the largest boxes I've ever managed. However there were some major latency issues that no one could resolve. I found that the person who configured the server did not properly allocate TempDB, which I have found to be a very common problem. After TempDB was reconfigured the machine has been performing quite well with no issues. Performance is where it was to be expected with such a large box. In general after I've applied my "touch" to problematic machines I've never had any issues with them.

So I feel this is a good standard to live by.

All the best.

Kurt