IOPS...

  • Hi Experts,

    I’ve just started in a new role, for a company that is using a 3rd party product for our key systems. For the first time in nearly 20 years working with SQL, I am a 'team' of 1, with Network maintenance provided by a 3rd party. There are numerous configurations that I need to question, but the one troubling me is – how can I determine the number of IOPS that SQL is generating?

    The databases reside on a SAN, that is not ideally configured [there are many logical drives all mapped to the same physical disks, which are in a RAID 5 array]. What I would like to provide are some figures detailing the transaction throughput, instead of just saying ‘trust me, the disk architecture sucks’ so I can start conversations around the fact that we need to revisit the disk configuration.

    The DMV sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats contains details on the number of Reads & Writes per file, would these figures equate to IOPS?

    We are using SQL 2008.

    Thank you for your advice,

  • You could use sqlio to benchmark the drives.

    Here is a video tutorial by Brent Ozar that should help you understand how to use the tool.

    Hope this helps

    Gianluca

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • Hello,

    You can use both read/sec and write/sec available from Physical Disk and Logical Disk counter sets.

    Have a look here for extra guidance and information:

    http://blogs.technet.com/cotw/archive/2009/03/18/analyzing-storage-performance.aspx

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc300400.aspx

    http://blogs.technet.com/vipulshah/archive/2006/11/30/understanding-perfmon-counters-while-troubleshooting-sql-server-performance-issues.aspx

    Note: be careful interpreting the results correctly depending upon the type of storage: DAS, SAN, RAID... See details in the links above

  • Get SQLIO out and push the storage to see what you can and cant get out of it. this forms the base of what you can provide performance wise

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    "Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉

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