Professional SQL Server® 2005 Performance Tuning

12.2. Storage Performance

The Performance of the Storage Subsystem is the foundation stone for the performance of the applications you build in SQL Server. Having a good baseline of the performance your storage subsystem can deliver is an essential step in the journey to a SQL Server system with good performance. In this section you will learn about tools to use for running a performance test, and then you will learn about the various metrics available to measure performance.

12.2.1. Storage Performance Measuring Tools

There are quite a few tools available that measure different aspects of storage performance. Many of them are specialized to a single application, some for Exchange (LoadSim and JetStress), and others for file system benchmarking (IOZone) The two most frequently used for pure storage performance measurement are IOMeter and SQLIO.

12.2.1.1. IOMeter

This tool is perhaps the most referenced tool for storage subsystem performance measurement. It is both a performance tool and a stress tool. Originally developed by Intel, it was given to the open source community. Versions are available from the open source community for Windows, Linux, Netware, and many variations of Unix. IOMeter's default configuration is to operate as a stress test, and it takes quite some reconfiguration to get it to operate as a performance tool, but it can be done.

12.2.1.2. SQLIO

This is a very simple but powerful tool available from Microsoft. No one is really sure why this tool is called ...