Last time, I blogged on the first in a series of steps you need to take to verify your system is not experiencing any system errors or deadlocks. There are just a few more things you need to verify before moving on. Validate the Server Properties Start...

Getting optimal performance with Windchill depends on how the logical drives are configured and delegated. Randomly assigning logical drives will not give optimal performance. Having too few logical drives will result in greater latency and reduced performance...

Understanding DBCC (Database Console Commands) is a step toward becoming a better and well-rounded DBA for Workforce Central. In my last post , I covered the basics of DBCC and two of its commands: SQLPERF and HELP. In this post, I will cover the DBCC...

Understanding DBCC (Database Console Commands) is a step toward becoming a better and well-rounded database administrator (DBA) for Workforce Central. DBCC is a command in Transact-SQL that helps you implement maintenance, validation, and information...

How do you know if you have something out of the ordinary occurring on your database application system if you don't have a good feel for what "ordinary" looks like? Finding the Norm It is difficult to determine if there is a performance bottleneck...

Regular maintenance is critical for running a healthy database. Maintenance reduces file fragmentation and provides backups that may be stored off site. The order in which you complete the various maintenance steps has significant consequences. In this...

Knowing which queries are performing slowly gives you inside knowledge that you can use to optimize SQL Server. Every query that is executed against SQL Server is stored in the plan cache. Besides the raw query and the execution plan that is needed for...

RAM is the secret sauce in SQL Server performance: the more RAM, the faster the performance. In this post, I'll discuss how RAM is allocated for the data cache in SQL Server. SQL Server fulfills a request for data only from RAM, never streaming off the...

You have your highly available instance of SQL Server in place, and you've grown comfortable with the unique attributes of administering a clustered SQL Server configuration. (See my previous post .) Now, you've decided (or PTC has asked you) to apply...

SQL Server failover clustering can be intimidating if you're not used to administering clustered systems. In my earlier post , I discussed how to install Windows and SQL Server in a failover cluster configuration. Windchill fully supports using a clustered...

SQL Server has a variety of options to improve availability, including failover clustering. Failover clustering protects you from several kinds of hardware and software failures, such as a server crash, a local disk drive failure, or an application fault...

The PAL tool can help you find performance bottlenecks in SQL Server running Windchill by aggregating and evaluating the hundreds of Windows Performance Monitor counters that are associated with SQL Server. In part 1 and part 2 of this series about the...

Do you want to improve the performance of Windchill on SQL Server by finding and clearing the bottlenecks? Then fire up the PAL tool. This tool can help you find performance bottlenecks in SQL Server running Windchill by aggregating and evaluating the...