1. Benchmarking the forgotten Role of Performance Tuning
By Bryan Oliver SQL Server Domain Expert

2. Agenda What is Benchmarking Why Benchmark Call to Action
Benchmark Factory Demo
Q & A

3. What is Benchmarking The measurement of specific hardware performance
CPU
DISK I/O
VIDEO
Memory

4. What is Benchmarking in Databases
The measurement of a systems ability to complete transactions normally in Transaction per Second
Different standards exists for both OLTP OLAP type databases
Allows you to understand the hardware cost per transaction
Definable and consitent set of tests

5. Why Benchmark Databases
Stress test hardware
Understand the achievable maximum throughput
Reduce the impact on end users and prevent unnecessary downtime by replaying production workload or simulating development environments
Validate the performance of database applications by testing different user scenarios prior to deployment
Meet SLAs by testing database applications for scalability
Minimize the risk of database upgrades, migration and platform changes by simulating production workload in test environments and identifying database breaking points

6. TWO APPROACHES TO MONITORING
There are two general approaches to service monitoring, each with their own benefits and drawbacks:
Proactive monitoring
Under this approach, the DBA takes baseline measurements, benchmark metrics, and maintains an active monitoring regime. This approach ensures the most comprehensive service levels.
Exceptions monitoring
Under this approach, the DBA creates automated processes that only note exceptions to “normal” service. This approach provides the most coverage with the least amount of time.

7. PROACTIVE MONITORING
The pros and cons of proactive monitoring.
A good proactive monitoring regime can catch problems before they occur.
Proactive monitoring gets the DBA out of constant fire fighter mode.
A proactive monitoring regime provides the best information about environments and applications.
Proactive monitoring requires more time to set up
A deeper understanding of the performance profile of the databases and applications running against them.
Proactive monitoring requires the DBA to review reports, charts, or other performance indicators produced by the monitoring system.

8. Building a Regimen—Start with the BASELINE
The baseline measurement has several goals:
• It tells you all about the performance of a server under normal conditions.
• It helps you document and understand as many as possible (if not all) background processes.
• It helps you build in filters to catch “do not respond” situations before the DBA sees them.

9. PerfMon has a Role Memory—Pages/sec Network Interface—Bytes total/sec
PhysicalDisk—Disk Transfers/sec
Processor—% Processor Time
SQLServer:Access Methods—Full Scans/sec.
SQLServer:Buffer Manager—Buffer Cache Hit Ratio
SQLServer:Databases—Log Growths
SQLServer:Databases Application Database—Percent Log Used
SQLServer:Databases Application Database—Transactions/sec
SQLServer:General Statistics—User Connections
SQLServer:Latches—Average Latch Wait Time
SQLServer:Locks—Average Wait Time
SQLServer:Locks—Lock Waits/sec.
SQLServer:Locks—Number of Deadlocks/sec.
SQLServer:Memory Manager—Memory Grants Pending
SQLServer:User Settable—Query (a tracer query)

10. Baselining, Benchmarking, and Monitoring for SQL Server
DBAs who wish to proactively manage and maintain their SQL Servers should build a performance baseline of the database server and application.
After establishing a performance baseline, the DBA should build benchmarks for a better understanding of the database server and application performance under stress.
Both the baseline and the benchmarks can be created using SysMon counters, although this can be a long and arduous process.
The monitoring approach is completely implemented when the DBA has incorporated alerts that notify them, preferably in advance, of issues and problem situations on their database servers.

11. Microsoft Tools
Database Hammer The Database Hammer is similar to the previous version's SQL Load Simulator, but Database Hammer is a VB app that you can customize. (The old utility was a multithreaded app that connected to SQL Server via ODBC, while this one uses OLEDB to connect to SQL Server from multiple instances of a VB component and inserts 10 million rows of random data into a test database.)

12. Resources
Microsoft SQL Server Resource Kit tools - 'Free' with MSDN and TechNet
Check out
Mat Stephen's SQL Server WebLog at

13. Call to Action – Next Steps
Attend a live demo:
Download white papers:
Get a trial versions:
us with your questions: or go to

14. THANK YOU! Q & A Send questions to me at: bryan.oliver@quest.com
Send broader technical questions to:
For sales questions, go to:
THANK YOU!