3 ways to remain consistent when performance tuning your SQL servers

Tuning the performance of SQL servers can be a complex and time-consuming task that can affect consistency. Frustratingly, there are no shortcuts either – it’s a job that needs doing and cutting corners can spell disaster for your organisation and require some costly maintenance to put right.

Tuning the performance of SQL servers can be a complex and time-consuming task that can affect consistency. Frustratingly, there are no shortcuts either – it’s a job that needs doing and cutting corners can spell disaster for your organisation and require some costly maintenance to put right.

Here, we’ll take a look at three ways to keep the process consistent when you performance tune SQL servers:

Total Control

For many organisations today, server instances can number in the hundreds, if not the thousands, and taking the time to individually tune each one can be a very long process.

Thankfully, some database tools are designed to work with large and scalable systems, such as those offered by dbWatch which work with thousands of instances at a time. With the help of these tools, DBAs can now work in a new way, comparing and tuning their entire environment together, without needing to dig down into each instance, one at a time.

Not only does this level of control greatly reduce the time needed for performance tuning, but it can provide much-needed oversight too. From just one interface DBAs can access all of the information that they need, managing and monitoring their entire system without the need for multiple reports or a suite of different tools.

Top To Bottom Tweaks

While the total oversight offered by database tools is useful for implementing sweeping changes and seeing their effects at a glance, the same tools can also be used to dive deeper into the system to make smaller instance-specific tweaks.

Thanks to the all-in-one interface provided by tools, allowing you to see and manage all of your instances from within one tool, diving into an individual instance is a simple task. This level of control again helps to save DBAs valuable time, as well as cutting down on the number of tools used by your business – saving you money on licensing and installation costs too

Planning Ahead

No matter how many instances you operate, or how complex the changes you need to make may be, no good project can start without adequate planning. So, before a DBA can start the process of tuning a server, they need to know which areas are fit for improvement and what sort of changes should be made.

To help with this, many teams use tools which automatically collect and analyse data about load and resourcing. Armed with the relevant reports, DBAs can waste no time in making the best possible tweaks to an instance, providing the exact benefits that their business needs. Check out SQL Monitoring – 5 steps to full control on monitoring/data collection and analysis.

These same automated tools can be used to provide data to show the effectiveness of any performance changes, giving DBAs an idea of how successful their tuning was. This can help to inform any future maintenance and serve as evidence to others in your organisation of the benefits of the work that you’ve completed.

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SQL server tuning can be a long and complicated job, but there are tools out there designed to make it a little easier. 

With access to reports and figures to guide you, and control over all your instances from just one tool, your DBAs will be able to get the job done quicker than ever before without cutting any corners.