SQL Server performance tuning can seem overwhelming when you don’t know where to start. In this article Robert Sheldon explains 9 best practices for performance tuning.

SQL Server is a powerful and feature-rich database management platform that can support a wide range of applications, but if queries are not performing well or workloads are running into deadlocks, latency issues, and other disruptions in service, no one will care about how good the platform is. Their only concern will be application performance. This article describes nine best practices for SQL Server performance tuning.

The best way to ensure that SQL Server can meet its performance requirements is to implement a robust performance tuning strategy that takes into account all aspects of the SQL Server environment. Not only does this include indexes and queries, which are often the primary targets of tuning efforts, but also the hardware infrastructure, server and database settings, log and data files, and any other components that support the environment.

In this article, I provide nine best practices for carrying out performance tuning in a SQL Server environment. Each best practice is in itself a broad enough topic to warrant its own article (or series of articles or even a book or two). For this reason, these best practices—or guidelines— should be thought of as a starting point only, with the understanding that you should delve more deeply into each topic to gain a clearer understanding of what’s involved. The guidelines are meant only to launch you on your way to effective performance tuning and provide you with a foundation for getting started.

#sql monitor #sql server performance #sql #sql server