The most common issue I have seen believe it or not is simply referencing a table UDF in a FROM clause. Anything more than a simple select therein (and...

Jeff, just so you (and everyone else) knows: :exclamation: UDF usage was an even GREATER cause of horrible performance than table variables at all 3 of those clients I...

The last 3 consecutive clients I have engaged with for performance tuning work have had the exact same problem: excessive use of table variables leading to poor performance. ...

1) tune your queries and indexes to minimize I/O requirements

2) check here for io stalls: sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats

3) watch perfmon avg disk sec/read and avg disk sec/write counters under physical...

Tim, I recommend calling Tivoli and asking if they have any known issue that could be causing this or a patch to address it. Then call Microsoft support (for...

4K is definitely suboptimal. Also very important (and another thing most miss just like using default cluster sizes on format) is to sector align the partitions.

Of course, I got a good deal of attention in my last interview (for my current job) by putting my volunteer Online RPG Admin experience on my resume. It's...

Hey, I didn't know you could proactively keep Murphy at bay by being randomly destructive yourself!! Perhaps I will give that a try - but I bet you would...

SP2 by itself is a bad place to be. I recommend applying at least CU4, if not 5 or 6. The paging out can be caused by a...

Good one Grant -I especially like the radioactive rat poison part!! LOL

I DO know about Murphy (can't be a pilot without knowing him and his nefarious activities)! That's...

I guess someone has to play devil's advocate here, so here goes:

Brandie, you are totally off the mark. Do whatever you can to make the most money so you...

The order of the columns is critical to optimal index performance. It is usually appropriate to put the columns in order of specificity, assuming all 3 columns (or at...

I would take a look at storing your files as just that - disk files. Then store the full path and filename in a database field. This will...

You actually need TWO documents. First is on cluster setup/install/tuning. I believe you can find a very fine example on this sight, written by Brad McGehee?? A...

Hardware can certainly help. I am regularly amazed at how well SQL Server and Windows perform on modern hardware - at least when SQL, databases, code and hardware are...