March 20, 2013 at 9:16 am
I'm relatively new to SQL server development in a non-collegiate scenario, so i will try to be as concise as possible.
Our production server handles a lot of queries every day from many sources(sales dept.,our website, amazon, reporting, etc...). When the server begins to noticeably slow we have found that the server resources aren't maxing out. The data choke point seems to be the hard drive read/write speed.
(This is how it was explained to me, and I have been given the task of researching this possible solution.)
My question is: can you use transactional replication to replicate a database on another hard drive within the same server? We want to do this to offload all our reporting to the separate hard drive so the main hard drive is only handling orders without replacing hardware or building a second server. Sort of like an internal data warehouse.
Any help is much appreciated.
March 20, 2013 at 10:18 pm
There really is not enough info to say for sure what would be best for you, but one misconception I picked up is "choke point is read/write speed of disk" and I think it might be worth keying on to start a dialogue. Data is not read directly from disk unless the data required to satisfy a query is not present in memory, i.e. all data that is returned to satisfy a query is first loaded from disk to the buffer pool unless it is already in memory. The goal for SQL Server is to keep as much of the most-used data in memory as possible because it will result in better performance. If the problem traces back to the fact that data needs to be loaded from disk on a regular basis then tuning your queries and indexes so less data needs to be read to satisfy your queries, or the hardware solution of adding memory, is more likely to give you a higher return on investment than doing what you're talking about with adding another disk and replication.
There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
--Plato
March 21, 2013 at 8:18 am
I had a chat with my superior regarding your enlightening reply, and with that in mind he has decided to "...research an alternative solution."
Thank you for your helpful response, and thank you for being patient with my novice questions.
March 21, 2013 at 9:41 am
Anytime. Thanks for the feedback.
There are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue is taught by the whole community.
--Plato
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply