Microsoft Bob

This will be my last update for a while, but I did some more shuffling of the database files among the various PCIE SSD logical drives (HP I/O Accelerators which are HP-OEM Fusion-Io cards). See earlier post for info about the drives. In the latest test...

A couple of clarifications - including potential for much greater backup throughput beyond 3 GB/s up to 9 GB/s for this hardware: 1) Contrary to the video, 10 GbE is not the fastest practical Ethernet for server-to-server communications. 40 GbE network...

I should have said that 40 Gbe and 100 Gbe are not widely implemented rather than not available  – they are available. But, even 100 GbE is only adequate for 12 GBPS – and with Gen 3 PCIE SSD reading at 3.0 GBps +, that will easily be overrun by...

With the addition of another SATA SSD as well as another SLC Duo to serve as the target destination, the same SQL database which now has a total of 233 GB of used space was backed up in less than 1 minute using the same server referenced in my prior 2...

Follow-up from last post on 2.0 GBPS backup throughput - was able to update the firmware painlessly for the non-functional card from a Win 7 X64 machine so that it can now be updated on the HP Server to the latest HP-branded IO Accelerator driver. To...

I managed to squeeze 2 GBps (2192.207 MBps to be exact) out on 12 cores using a HP Server DL370 with 12 x 2.66 (12 MB Cache) cores, 108GB RAM, and 7 Fusion-IO Cards backing up from a database stored on 5 cards to backup files spread across 2 other cards...

I have become active in the Linked-in Community, especially regarding predictive analytics, as there are many very good discussion groups. So, to save effort and still get a couple of hours of sleep, a lot of my posting here will come from there. ...

i've blogged a few times about Fusion-IO devices and my experiences with SSD. I've been thinking about the implications of large in-memory databases that retain persistence and transactional capabilities. Turns out the game may be changing long-term to...

Yes, I know its been a while since I have posted anything and way past due to post my update on my fusion-io card testing (I now have 6 memory devices in my R710 - 2 cards are duo). I will hopefully get to that in the next couple of weeks as I am using...

I’ve been working on this and wanted to achieve max throughput before posting, but since I am stuck, thought I would post what I have to this point. I have 4 Fusion-IO cards including a duo in a 12 core (2.66 MHz/12 MB Cache, E5650 processors) with 96...

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted. Been very busy with a DoD project. I plan to add a post soon on how my SSD experience is going. I have now accumulated 7 PCIE Fusion SSD cards (3 SLC 160GB, 3 320GB MLC, 1 320 Duo SLC) as well as an additional...

In my last blog entry ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoftbob/archive/2010/11/06/the-potential-of-ssd-for-millions-of-iops-on-increasingly-larger-databases.aspx ), I shared the throughput numbers backing up from 2 Fusion-IO devices to a 4-spindle 15K SAS...

NOTE: There is an update to this article at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/microsoftbob/archive/2010/11/08/pcie-ssd-update-optimizing-sql-backup-performance.aspx regarding the throughput I was able to achieve on my own configuration with the Fusion-io backup...

I’m back after being on leave for past several weeks in case you wonder why I haven’t posted. To quote Joy Gresham from the move ShadowLands “I wasn’t dead, I was just in America (fill-in-the-blank)” This was one of my favorite...

If you’re one of the dozen or so people who follow my blog, you’re aware that I’m using SSDs for my doctoral research project involving simulations to find solutions to complex data correlation problems. I finally have started to get...

My main customer utilizes SSIS for some SQL and Oracle integration requirements. One challenge they’ve had is timeouts from the Oracle side. We’ve tried everything to eliminate the issue in terms of extending timeout values within SSIS, but...

Here’s a quick tip if you don’t want to try to use random and figure out seed, etc.  If you’ve got a lot of columns in a table, it is pretty likely that the checksum for all those data values are going to be random across your primary keys. I recently...

For today, I recycle bits from a couple of excellent authors in the SQL community. The first script is for optimizing compression. I “borrowed” this from Paul Nielson, author of the SQL Bible. You can visit his SQL Server bible site at http://www.sqlserverbible...

If you’re like me, you like GUIs even for SQL Server, they make it easier to do things quickly without having to remember a lot of syntax.  But GUIs within Management Studio ultimately have to fire off TSQL to perform the changes.  And not knowing...

Been working with 2 PCIE Fusion cards testing out performance for my SQL Server simulation database. I also have a raid set of 3 Intel X25-E SSDs. This is a technology to take seriously. The folks at Fusion have been most helpful. I will be putting together...

After a long and painful process, I have finally achieved this.   Was it worth it, would I do it again?  Absolutely.  But please don’t call me Master Bob, Microsoft Bob is fine… I am doing quite a bit more work with my simulation database...

I apologize as I notice there are some inquiries related to code posted. I should probably set expectations about this, as I am not the typical Microsoft employee with a MSDN blog. Most of the other folks with MSDN blogs are in the product teams and blogging...

This weekend I played with partitioning.  I have a table with about 10 million rows spanning the last 6 years of stock history for AMEX, NYSE, Indexes, and NASDAQ.   I partitioned each year into a separate filegroup so that should make...

With SQL Server 2008, Microsoft re-architected SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to no longer have an IIS dependency. It now relies directly on HTTP.SYS and handles web protocols independently. This is a good thing, in a lot of respects (see http:...

If you’ve been following my blog, you may remember an article I did extolling the virtues of indexed views - http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoftbob/archive/2009/05/13/sql-data-warehousing-tip-2-indexed-views.aspx .  I stand behind that and have found...