Help with file and wait stats

  • Due to performance complaints, I am running file and wait stats delta between 8-5 on a 2K5 DB. I consistently get the following top 3 for resource waits

    PAGEIOLATCH_SH : 40% (max of 3 secs) 554 secs over 100K requests

    CXPACKET : 31% (max of 3 secs) 430 secs over 249K requests

    WRITELOG : 15% (max of 2 secs) 216 secs over 35K requests

    and the following top 3 for signal waits

    CXPACKET : 79% 37 secs over 249K requests

    SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD : 8.7% 4 secs over 197K requests

    ASYNC_NETWORK_IO : 2.1% 1 sec 50K requests

    I researched online and gathered that PAGEIOLATCH_SH is usually when the disk is slow and CXPACKET is when processory is slow. This is a dual core machine with 4G of RAM connected to a SAN array (RAID5), maxdop is not enabled and dedicated SQL (not clustered). Also, we have 2 different mounts and LUN for data and log file.

    I am at a loss to troubleshoot further, any guidance is appreciated.

    thanks

  • CXPacket is caused by parallel skew, when a process parallels and the part on the one processor runs faster than the other (usually due to having an imbalanced split in work). The process that ran faster then has to wait for the other to catch up before a merge. That wait is the CXPacket wait.

    If that's significant, consider setting maxdop to 1. It means that processes won't run parallel at all any more.

    As for the disks, could you please run perfmon for a few hours at a busy time and see what the max, min and avg values are for the following counters (per physical disk)

    Physical disk: Avg sec/read

    Physical disk: Avg sec/write

    Physical disk: % idle time

    Physical disk: Avg disk queue length

    SQL server Buffer manager:Cache hit ratio

    SQL server Buffer manager:page life expectency

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass

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