vik_steve (6/8/2009)
The applications is web based (php). I have managed to stabilise the database:The error in log file was:
Autogrow of file ** in database ** cancelled or timed out after 3344 ms. Use ALTER DATABASE to set a smaller FILEGROWTH or to set a new size.
Having monitored the saze of the data file it hasn't really grown recently. It's 18GB in size but has been for months. I'm not sure why this has suddenly become an issue?
I set it to 2% and all seems OK. Could this be a hardware (although there is plenty of free disc space) / memory / processor issue?
This changes the picture. You should first manually add more space to the database. Add enough space so it won't have to use the auto grow. Using the auto grow is not recommended because it can add to the file's fragmentation. It should be used only if the DBA did not notice that the database ran out of place and you don't want that DML statements will fail because of space problems.
When you configure the autogrow set it by MB and not percentage. If you'll set it by MB it will always get the same addition to the file. If you'll set it by percentage, it will always get different addition size and you might get the timeout problem again. You should set it to a size that will be enough for your operations but not to much so it won't fail because of time out.
Adi
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